PhD in Mechanical Engineering

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) strategies aim to mitigate climate change in the support of the UK’s net-zero target for 2050. However, injection of CO2 into deep saline aquifers initiate a series of geochemical reactions leading to mineral dissolution followed by the precipitation of secondary minerals. From a fluid dynamics perspective, the newly formed solids can be regarded as particles suspended within the pore-scale flow. The primary objective of this project is to investigate the transport, migration, and accumulation of precipitated particles in CO2–water–rock systems using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) coupled with discrete element method (DEM). The research outcomes will provide critical insights into the microscale transport phenomena relevant to subsurface storage performance, including permeability evolution and CO2 containment. Furthermore, the framework developed here can be extended to related fields such as contaminant transport, geothermal systems, and mineral recovery.