This lab hosts some of the cutting-edge tools and technologies in the domain of Applied Geoscience and Petroleum Engineering.
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee in its pursuit to lead the future by providing cutting-edge science and technology solutions took another big leap when it opened up a state-of-the-art laboratory named ‘Rock & Fluid Multiphysics Laboratory'. The lab was inaugurated by Padma Bhushan Dr Vijay Kumar Saraswat, Member, NITI Aayog in the presence of Professor Ajit K Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee, Professor Manoranjan Parida, Deputy Director, IIT Roorkee, and Professor Akshay Dwivedi, Dean SRIC, IIT Roorkee. Professor Manika Prasad, Colorado School of Mines, USA, along with Professor Anand Joshi, Head Earth Sciences, and other respected faculty colleagues of IIT Roorkee and students also graced the inaugural ceremony.
This lab hosts some of the cutting-edge tools and technologies in the domain of Applied Geoscience and Petroleum Engineering. It can facilitate multiphysics and multiscale experiments and create feasibility models for increasing the success rates of the exploration and development targets of energy companies in their efforts to successfully exploit conventional and unconventional energy resources.
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The laboratory is also capable of making an observation in the resistivity domains using economic and non-destructive techniques like spectral induced polarization (SIP) measurements and the cation exchange capacity (CEC) measurements. This multiphysics approach to understanding the physical processes of rock and fluid and their interactions in the laboratory helps a great deal in upscaling the observations to understand the field measurements.
This lab can handle characterization challenges of the oil and gas reservoir in routine (more homogeneous and good permeability) and complex (very heterogeneous and poor permeability) formations including the hydrates and the geothermal systems. The lab can also carry out carbon utilization and storage feasibility studies for formations such as shales, organic-rich resources, carbonates, coals, saline aquifers, coals, and volcanic rocks.
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Professor Ravi Sharma, PhD, In-charge, Rock and Fluid Multi-physics Laboratory, IIT Roorkee, highlighted, "In the laboratory, we simultaneously experiment with rock physics modelling to investigate the multi-physical properties of rocks, fluids and their interactions at benchtop and in-situ condition. It is very challenging to invert for the subsurface properties but the critical feasibility models from this laboratory can help reduce the uncertainty to understand the potential of oil & gas, hydrates, and geothermal resources."
Dr Vijay Kumar Saraswat, Member, NITI Aayog, said, “State of art laboratory like these fits very well into the dynamics of the challenges associated with exploration and development of energy resources hosted in the complex subsurface formation. This laboratory would also be a significant boost to the efforts of carbon sequestration and a good understanding of the associated implications with the help of feasibility models created in the lab. My best wishes to Professor Sharma and hope to see some field applicable solutions coming out from the laboratory in near future.”