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Innovation and Industry
News 04 February 2022

IFPEN and geothermal energy: multidisciplinary research for complex technical challenges

The WGC 2020+1 World Geothermal Congress, held last October, brought together more than 3,000 experts from around the globe. Objective: to discuss the latest technologies in this sector. The event was an opportunity to highlight recent advances developed at IFPEN aimed at addressing the principal difficulties encountered by geothermal energy operators.

Fundamental Research
News 19 December 2019

New porous microstructure descriptors based on tortuosity and accessibility

IFP Energies nouvelles has developed new morphological descriptors for porous networks. The result of work carried out in partnership by two of its research divisions, they are hinged around the concepts of accessibility and tortuosity to describe paths within a material.

Individual page

Mathieu FERAILLE

Research engineer / project leader
Holder of an Engineering Graduate Degree in General Engineering from the "Ecole Polytechnique" (Palaiseau – France) and a Specialized Engineering Graduate Degree in Petroleum Engineering and Project
Issue 46 of Science@ifpen - Earth Sciences and Environmental Technologies
News in brief

The transport of colloidal particles in porous media is relevant to a number of fields, including geosciences and environmental engineering. Particle-matrix interactions can lead to deposit formation and accumulation, potentially damaging the medium and altering its permeability. (...) At IFPEN, the problem was originally studied for oil and gas production, but research has now been extended to include the fields of geothermal energy and geological storage of CO2.
Issue 46 of Science@ifpen - Earth Sciences and Environmental Technologies
News in brief

Salt precipitation in permeable rocks is a risk faced by some energy sectors, particularly for gas storage in geological formations during operational phases (injection and extraction), when there is contact with saline aquifers. (...) This precipitation reduces the space where fluids can circulate, altering rock permeability, or even leading to plugging under certain conditions. In order to understand the underlying mechanisms behind this damaging phenomenon, experiments examining gas flow in a brine-saturated porous medium were conducted on IFPEN’s CAL-X flow test bench...
Issue 46 of Science@ifpen - Earth Sciences and Environmental Technologies
News in brief

To address the challenges of the energy transition, the subsurface has an important role to play, both in terms of providing resources and offering storage solutions. (...) Numerical models can help gain a better understanding of the subsurface with a view to its long-term management and optimal use. Developed for a number of years now at IFPEN, initially for the petroleum industry, such models cover scales ranging from the sedimentary basin to the reservoir...
Issue 46 of Science@ifpen - Earth Sciences and Environmental Technologies
News in brief

Today, the impact of climate change and human activities on the evolution of landscapes and water resources is a major challenge. Predicting it requires dedicated tools capable of evaluating, 100 years ahead, the consequences of different scenarios on watersheds and groundwater. To this end, IFPEN is developing modeling approaches targeting erosion-transport-deposition phenomena combined with surface and subsurface flows. ...
Issue 45 of Science@ifpen
News in brief

Today, characterization of geological reservoirs, a long-standing theme in petroleum exploration, becomes a base of interest for a variety of applications, such as CO2 and hydrogen storage as well as geothermal energy. In recent years, the combined use of 3D microtomography (or micro-CT ) imaging and advanced simulation techniques has allowed the emergence of a digital approach to computing the petrophysical properties of reservoir rocks (Digital Rock Physics). This represents a real complement - and in some cases an alternative - to traditional laboratory measurements.
Individual page

Maria-Fernanda ROMERO-SARMIENTO

Research Engineer / Project Leader
Organic Geochemistry PhD.
Sciences of the Earth and the Universe HDR
Maria-Fernanda Romero-Sarmiento joined IFP Energies nouvelles in 2010 as a research scientist in organic geochemistry. She holds a Ph.D. in Organic Geochemistry from the University of Lille (France)
Issue 42 of Science@IFPEN
News in brief

Foam injection during oil production or ground remediation is aimed at overcoming problems of gravity segregation and viscous fingeringa created by fluid injection. Improving this practice requires
Individual page

Mathilde ADELINET

Lecturer in Geophysics at IFP School
Mathilde Adelinet graduated from the Ecole normale supérieure in 2007. She next worked on elastic properties of basalt in Iceland at the Maine University where she obtained her PhD in 2010. In 2010
Issue 41 of Science@IFPEN
News in brief

Carbonate reservoirs present significant heterogeneities (in terms of types and scales) associated with the biological origin of sedimentsc, as well as the diagenetic transformations that took place