Joachim Moortgat | The Ohio State University (original) (raw)

Papers by Joachim Moortgat

Lithosphere

Organic matter (OM) pores are widely considered to be important for gas storage and transportatio... more Organic matter (OM) pores are widely considered to be important for gas storage and transportation. In this work, we quantitatively analyze the pore structure of OM and its controlling factors through geochemical and petrologic analyses, optical microscope, OM isolation, and adsorption isotherms. These analyses were carried out on lacustrine shale samples from the Lower Cretaceous Shahezi Formation, which is located in the Changling Fault Depression in Songliao Basin. The results show that the content of soluble OM (SOM) is low, accounting for 0.26%-3.75% of total OM. The contribution of pore development from SOM itself is limited. After extraction of SOM by chloroform, pore volume (PV), specific surface area (SSA), and average pore diameter (APD) exposed to gas molecules greatly increase. The existence of SOM has an obvious effect on pores of >10 nm, especially the clay mineral-related pores that contribute the most to the total PV. The content of kerogen is higher than SOM and ...

Applied Geochemistry

Abstract Deformational features, such as faults, strongly affect the pathways, rates, and length-... more Abstract Deformational features, such as faults, strongly affect the pathways, rates, and length-scales of fluid flow in sedimentary basins. The hydrologic properties of faults vary greatly, allowing them to exhibit hydrologic behaviors spanning the gamut from open and conductive pathways for fluid flow to closed barriers to fluid flow. As a result, determining the role of faults with respect to fluid flow and their impact on geologic fluid migration throughout the life cycle of sedimentary basins remains challenging. Previous studies interrogate fault behavior using structural characteristics of fault cores and damage zones or the geochemistry of fluid inclusions and mineral veins associated with these features. Here, we evaluate the utility of crustal noble gases as tracers of fluid flow in fault systems by examining the composition of a well-constrained fault system in the Northern Appalachian Basin. The Seneca Stone Thrust fault, located near Seneca Falls, NY, USA, displays ∼5 m of offset in the Onondaga Limestone and Marcellus Shale. Significant loss of 4He and 21Ne* near the fault appears to occur prior to basin exhumation, likely resulting from compactive dewatering or hydrocarbon generation and migration. Subsequent cooling shifted fault function from acting as a conduit to acting as a barrier, allowing accumulation of crustal noble gases for extended geologic time (∼140 Myr) apparently in a closed-system. We identify significantly lower [4He] and 4He/21Ne* in a discrete zone that includes the fault core and extends ∼30 cm into the intensely fractured portion of the fault damage zone as compared to the rest of the fault damage zone (∼5 m in width) and other nearby samples from the Marcellus Fm. in the quarry pavement. These results imply that the Seneca Stone Thrust fault has reverted to behaving like a localized conduit in recent geological time. We interpret the discrete zone of extreme 4He loss near the fault plane as evidence of recent focused fluid flow within the fault core at temperatures below 94°C, possibly within the past ∼45,000 years. Our data suggest that crustal noble gases can be used to evaluate the timing of crustal isolation and/or hydraulic communication in fault zones locally in the Marcellus Shale and potentially in other geological settings. Future work can further develop this approach to examine the long-term suitability of geological formations for permanent subsurface storage of CO2, other gases (e.g., H2), or nuclear waste, as well as to determine if various subsurface intervals represent zones of hydrocarbon accumulation and/or loss over geological time.

2018 IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis), 2018

Occlusion management is an important task for three dimension data exploration. For egocentric da... more Occlusion management is an important task for three dimension data exploration. For egocentric data exploration, the occlusion problems, caused by the camera being too close to opaque data elements, have not been well addressed by previous studies. In this paper, we propose an automatic approach to resolve these problems and provide an occlusion free egocentric data exploration. Our system utilizes a state transition model to monitor both the camera and the data, and manages the initiation, duration, and termination of deformation with animation. Our method can be applied to multiple types of scientific datasets, including volumetric data, polygon mesh data, and particle data. We demonstrate our method with different exploration tasks, including camera navigation, isovalue adjustment, transfer function adjustment, and time varying exploration. We have collaborated with a domain expert and received positive feedback.

This decade is expected to witness the historical first direct

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 2021

Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 2016

carbon dioxide (CO2) into saline aquifers, increases brine density through dissolution, and leads... more carbon dioxide (CO2) into saline aquifers, increases brine density through dissolution, and leads to gravitational instability and convective mixing. Traditionally, only the underlying brinesaturated subdomain is studied to avoid two-phase systems while replacing the gas cap atop with a constant, fully-saturated boundary condition. This violates the interface movement, neglects the capillary transition zone across original phases, and imposes constant density at top boundary insensitive to convective downwelling flow. Moreover, dissolution causes volume swelling, reflected as pressure build-up in absence of interface (movement), which further increases the fluid density-not captured under Boussinesq approximation. Here we accurately model the nonlinear phase behavior of brine-CO2 mixture, altered by dissolution and compressibility. We inject CO2 at a sufficiently low injection rate to maintain the single, partiallysaturated phase, with no constraint on pressure and composition, so that density at top is free to change against the rate at which dissolved CO2 migrates downwards. We discover new flow regimes and present quantitative scaling relations for their temporal evolution in both two-and three-dimensional porous media.

Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 2017

Fuel, 2021

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) supplem... more The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) supplementation from different sources in the diet of dairy sheep under high ambient temperatures on ex vivo lymphocyte proliferation and inflammatory responses. The experiment was carried out during summer: 32 Comisana ewes were divided into 4 groups of 8. The FS group was supplemented with whole flaxseed, the AG group was supplemented with Ascophyllum nodosum, the FS+AG group was supplemented with a combination of flaxseed and A. nodosum. The fourth group (CON group) was a control and received a diet containing no supplement. The average maximum temperature was around 33°C during wk 2 and 3, whereas the mean temperature never decreased below 26°C. Following 15 d of treatment with respective diets, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from sheep who received a diet supplemented with A. nodosum had impaired cell proliferation responses and IL-6 production after mitogen stimulation compared with PBMC from FS+AG sheep. In addition, PBMC from AG sheep displayed impaired cell proliferation compared with cells from the CON group. The FS+AG cells produced lower levels of IL-10 than CON cells, and higher IL-6 than AG and CON cells. Results demonstrated that the supplementation with PUFA from different sources in a sheep's diet can influence their immunological responses under high ambient temperatures depending on the composition of fatty acid supplementation. In particular, synergistic effects of different PUFA from flaxseed and A. nodosum, simultaneously administrated in the sheep diet, were observed on activation of inflammation response.

Energy Exploration & Exploitation, 2021

Pores associated with organic matter are well known to play a significant role in shale gas capac... more Pores associated with organic matter are well known to play a significant role in shale gas capacities. However, an extremely high heterogeneity of organic pores often impacts our evaluation of reservoir quality. In this work, we analyze the formation mechanisms of the heterogeneity based on positioning observation method using a combination of field emission scanning electron microscopy and optical microscopy. These analyses were conducted on six lacustrine shale samples at the gas window in the Lower Cretaceous Shahezi shale, which is located in the Changling Fault Depression of Songliao Basin. The results reveal that organic pore heterogeneity is mainly attributed to four controlling factors. (a) One is different hydrocarbon generation potentials among different macerals. The degree of pore development from high to low is solid bitumen, vitrinite, and inertinite. The content of carbon by the weight percentage of solid bitumen, vitrinite, and inertinite is in the opposite order, w...

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2020

Viscous and gravitational flow instabilities cause a displacement front to break up into finger-l... more Viscous and gravitational flow instabilities cause a displacement front to break up into finger-like fluids. The detection and evolutionary analysis of these fingering instabilities are critical in multiple scientific disciplines such as fluid mechanics and hydrogeology. However, previous detection methods of the viscous and gravitational fingers are based on density thresholding, which provides limited geometric information of the fingers. The geometric structures of fingers and their evolution are important yet little studied in the literature. In this work, we explore the geometric detection and evolution of the fingers in detail to elucidate the dynamics of the instability. We propose a ridge voxel detection method to guide the extraction of finger cores from three-dimensional (3D) scalar fields. After skeletonizing finger cores into skeletons, we design a spanning tree based approach to capture how fingers branch spatially from the finger skeletons. Finally, we devise a novel geometric-glyph augmented tracking graph to study how the fingers and their branches grow, merge, and split over time. Feedback from earth scientists demonstrates the usefulness of our approach to performing spatio-temporal geometric analyses of fingers.

Nuclear Engineering and Design, 2020

The development and validation of 3D multiphase computational fluid dynamics (M-CFD) models and p... more The development and validation of 3D multiphase computational fluid dynamics (M-CFD) models and physics-informed data-driven modeling require data of high-quality and high-resolution. Considering the difficulties in acquiring the corresponding experimental data in prototypical conditions, two-phase boiling simulations by Interface Tracking Method (ITM) based models can be used to generate high-resolution numerical data in a consistent and relatively economical manner. A boiling model is developed in one of the ITM-based multiphase-flow solvers, named PHASTA, to investigate the nucleate boiling phenomenon. The interaction between bubbles forming at adjacent nucleation sites is investigated with this ITM boiling model. Nucleate pool boiling simulations with multiple nucleation sites are presented in this paper and influences of site distance, neighboring bubble size and contact angle effect are investigated. The presented boiling model can conduct boiling simulation on 3D unstructured computational meshes. These simulation results improve our understanding of the physical mechanisms of the nucleate boiling phenomenon and provide high-resolution numerical data for M-CFD validation and advanced boiling model development.

Advances in Water Resources, 2018

This work presents an efficient reservoir simulation framework for multicomponent, multiphase, co... more This work presents an efficient reservoir simulation framework for multicomponent, multiphase, compressible flow, based on the cubic-plus-association (CPA) equation of state (EOS). CPA is an accurate EOS for mixtures that contain non-polar hydrocarbons, self-associating polar water, and cross-associating molecules like methane, ethane, unsaturated hydrocarbons, CO 2 , and H 2 S. While CPA is accurate, its mathematical formulation is highly non-linear, resulting in excessive computational costs that have made the EOS unfeasible for large scale reservoir simulations. This work presents algorithms that overcome these bottlenecks and achieve an efficiency comparable to the much simpler cubic EOS approach. The main applications that require such accurate phase behavior modeling are 1) the study of methane leakage from high-pressure production wells and its potential impact on groundwater resources, 2) modeling of geological CO 2 sequestration in brine aquifers when one is interested in more than the CO 2 and H 2 O components, e.g. methane, other light hydrocarbons, and various tracers, and 3) enhanced oil recovery by CO 2 injection in reservoirs that have previously been waterflooded or contain connate water. We present numerical examples of all those scenarios, extensive validation of the CPA EOS with experimental data, and analyses of the efficiency of our proposed numerical schemes. The accuracy, efficiency, and robustness of the presented phase split computations pave the way to more widespread adoption of CPA in reservoir simulators.

Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology, 2018

A field-scale carbon dioxide (CO 2) injection pilot project was conducted by the Southeast Region... more A field-scale carbon dioxide (CO 2) injection pilot project was conducted by the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) at Cranfield, Mississippi. Two associated campaigns in 2009 and 2010 were carried out to co-inject perfluorocarbon tracers (PFTs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF 6) with CO 2. Tracers in gas samples from two observation wells were analyzed to construct breakthrough curves. In this work, we present the field data and numerical modeling of the flow and transport of CO 2 , brine, and tracers. A high-resolution static model of the formation geology in the detailed area study (DAS) was used to capture the impact of connected flow pathways created by fluvial channels on breakthrough curves and breakthrough times of PFTs and SF 6 tracers. We use the cubic-plus-association (CPA) equation of state, which takes into account the polar nature of water molecules, to describe the phase behavior of CO 2-brine-tracer mixtures. Our simulated results show good agreement for the 2009 tracer campaign in Cranfield, while a larger discrepancy emerges by 2010. The combination of multiple tracer injection pulses with detailed numerical simulations proves to be a powerful tool in constraining both formation properties and how complex flow paths develop over time.

Energy & Fuels, 2019

To directly measure the gas content in the Benxi and Shanxi sub-formations of the Ordos 14 Basin ... more To directly measure the gas content in the Benxi and Shanxi sub-formations of the Ordos 14 Basin in NW China, a series of canister desorption tests (CDT) were carried out on 33 over-15 mature Lower Permian to Upper Carboniferous fresh shale cores (>3,000 m) at both the 16 reservoir temperature (75 to 80 °C) and an elevated temperature of 95°C. Organic 17 chemistry and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses of 33 replicate samples were used to 18 establish relationships between the gas content and rock composition. 19 Geochemical measurements show that the total organic carbon (TOC) contents 20 range from 0.49 wt % to 13.7 wt %. The organic matter is mainly Type III arising from 21 lagoon and delta depositional settings. The dominant minerals are clay (25-97 wt %, 22 average 59 wt %) and quartz (1-62 wt %, average 33 wt %). A new ternary diagram is 23 proposed based on the origin and brittleness of the minerals. 24

Geomechanics and Geophysics for Geo-Energy and Geo-Resources, 2017

We investigate the impact of heterogeneous bimodal porous media on fluid mixing and spreading in ... more We investigate the impact of heterogeneous bimodal porous media on fluid mixing and spreading in viscously-unstable flows. Previous studies have mostly studied miscible mixing and spreading behavior in unimodal media. We characterize the temporal evolution of these processes in bimodal media and under both miscible and partially miscible conditions. We model advection-diffusion transport of a finite volume of CO 2 diluting within a rectilinear background flow of a multicomponent compressible hydrocarbon fluid. Accurate numerical simulations are performed to capture the details of hydrodynamic instabilities as well as the heterogeneity channelling. Thermodynamic phase behavior and Fickian diffusion are represented based on rigorous equation of state. We generate by means of a Markov Chain approach the permeability fields that represent facies architecture by volume fractions of each facies unit. Our results show that bimodal media significantly alter the flow pattern and spreading dynamics, especially at lower proportions of the high-permeability facies. However, we find the miscible mixing to be less sensitive to bimodal media, as a result of a delicate balance between fingering and permeability channeling. On other hand, spreading is usually lower in partially miscible flows, but this can be overridden by channeling due to bimodal media. The new hydrothermodynamic mechanisms that predominantly drive most of the mixing in partially miscible systems are still in effect even in bimodal media regardless of the facies architecture. Therefore, partially miscible mixing is negligibly impacted by bimodal heterogeneity. Our qualitative and quantitative results elucidate the key flow processes resulting from bimodal structures, and also rationalize the distinct mixing and spreading behaviors that emerge differently from the interplay between hydrothermodynamic mechanisms and flow channeling.