MIT Earth Resources Laboratory presents Hadi Hajibeygi, Associate Professor at Delft University of Technology, on "Underground Hydrogen Storage: a multiscale experimental and numerical study."

"Subsurface geological formations provide giant capacities for storing renewable energy when it is converted into green gas (e.g. hydrogen) or compressed and hot fluids. While the utilisations of the subsurface formations for hydrocarbon productions and storage have a long track of success in the past decades, their successful contribution in the energy transition towards a green world comes with new scientific challenges. The cyclically-stored hydrogen is expected not only to be stored safely but to be reclaimed efficiently and with the same purity as in the injection phase. The critical stress also will impose restrictions on the volume, rate and frequency of the storage cycles. In this talk I will present our recent multiscale lab-modelling studies for rapid site selection and safe utilisation. We address variety of interconnected studies from pore-scale characterisation and sensitivity analyses to reservoir-scale multiscale modelling and simulation. Objectives are to characterise the cyclic hysteretic fluid transport and rock mechanics across scales in variety of geological formations from salt caverns to heterogeneous fractured porous media."

Hadi Hajibeygi is associate professor at TU Delft. His research interests are centred around modelling, simulation and sensitivity analysis of subsurface processes for large-scale renewable energy storage, geo-energy exploitation and greenhouse gas storage. He co-leads Delft Advanced Reservoir Simulation (DARSim) and Leads TU Delft Subsurface Storage Theme. He has been co-chair of the Interpore scientific program committee for 3 years and is in the committee of EAGE-ECMOR Conference & MIT Energy Symposium. He was the most Innovative Teaching Talent of TU Delft in 2018 and holds PhD (with medal) from ETH Zurich and has experience with Chevron Energy Technology Company in California. He did his post-doctoral research at Stanford University, Energy Resources Engineering, until 2013 when he joined TU Delft. He was guest professor at Stuttgart University between 2017-2020. He is a Dutch National Science ViDi Laurette of 2019.