Session 2
Water-Energy Nexus as One Focus Area of the Energy and the Environment Initiative: Pedro Alvarez
Energy and water security are increasingly interconnected grand challenges. All energy alternatives have a significant embodied water component (we cannot produce or generate energy without water –directly or indirectly), and vice-versa (a significant fraction of urban energy demand relates to treating and moving water). Fertile areas of research in this theme include water management for oil and gas production (huge amounts of water are used and contaminated during O&G production, often in arid areas, and traditional approaches are marginally effective for treating and adding value to the produced waters); the water footprint of alternative energy choices (assessment and mitigation of consumptive water use and associated water pollution); and the energy footprint of the urban water cycle (integration of novel materials, innovative treatment technologies, decentralized network topologies and emerging energy harvesting approaches to reduce overall energy requirements). Thus, we invite faculty interested in sustainable water management in an energy-constrained world to share their expertise and research interests towards the development of synergistic collaborative strategies.
Nanotechnology in Energy Storage: Pulickel Ajayan
It has been said that those who control materials control technology. Rice was ranked number one in the area of materials research by London’s Times higher education and nanotechnology has been a flagship of research at Rice. As part of the energy research we believe that nanotechnology can contribute significantly and we invite Rice faculty to join us in discussing the potential of nanotechnology in energy storage, the key element of the energy trio – conversion, storage and distribution. We hope to build on our existing expertise in different aspects of storage including battery, supercapacitors and hydrogen storage research. Rice with its strong position in materials and nanotechnology has a strong potential to become leader in this research area.
Earth Science, High Performance Computing, and Visualization in Energy Exploration and Production — Alan Levander
The Earth Sciences are fundamental to exploration and development of petroleum and gas reserves. The cornerstone technologies for oil and gas exploration are 3D seismic imaging, interpretation of 3D seismic images for earth structure, and rock physics, which relates elastic and anelastic rock behavior to both seismic observations and petroleum reservoir and seal properties. Emerging technologies are inversion of seismic data for elastic rock properties using single and multi-component seismic data, microearthquake monitoring of regions where tight gas is being produced, active and passive seismic monitoring of oil fields during production, and 3D reservoir modeling of fluid accumulation and production. Increasingly seismic and other geophysical observations are being combined with geologic and rock physics data in elaborate 3D flow models of reservoir behavior during production. Accurate rock physics and geomechamical models are necessary to help interpret rock properties and fluid pressures from geophysical data, and for defining mechanical behavior of reservoir systems including trap integrity and production rates and pathways. Integration of geomechanical data and geophysical data optimizes hydrocarbon production. HPC plays a crucial role in imaging, flow modeling, and particularly in inversion of seismic data. Visualization plays an important role in all aspects of exploration and production.
Energy Impacts on the Atmosphere: Robert Griffin
A direct coupling exists between energy production and usage and emissions to the atmosphere, with observable implications for human health, climate, and visibility. Current related areas of expertise at Rice University include (but are not limited to):
- use of three-dimensional modeling tools and satellite-derived data
- to study pollutant sources;
- development of new techniques for measurement of atmospheric pollutants;
- performance of field and laboratory studies to understand the
- impact of air pollutants on the local, regional, and global atmosphere; and
- analysis of data to understand the impact of these emissions on
- human health and climate.
Rice University is unique because of this integrated expertise (modeling, experimentation, and data analysis) across multiple academic departments and is in a prime position to lead future efforts in understanding energy impacts on the atmosphere, especially given its proximity to the energy industry in Houston, an area with a history of air quality issues. We invite faculty with similar interests to collaborate with us and diversify our expertise, as we aim to take a leadership role in this field
Energy Policy and Energy Transitions: Peter Hartley and Amy Jaffe
In this session, we will discuss interdisciplinary research on energy policy and how policy choices in the United States and other important economies will impact the choices for fuels in the coming decades and impact energy prices and markets. Energy security has been a major feature influencing policy choices in the past two decades, including links to national security and international relations, the geopolitical features affecting energy pricing and supply, and the effects of energy price fluctuations on macroeconomic and financial stability. A second area of energy policy study focuses on the environmental effects of exploiting different energy sources. Finally, more research needs to be done on the research and development process for new energy technologies and how to better define the time line for breakthrough technologies and how to properly assess the cost and policy challenges associated with a transition for the replacement of existing energy delivery infrastructure between now and 2050.
Cultures of Energy: Caroline Levander
This discussion will focus on recent humanistic research developments focused on energy and environment, both at Rice and beyond. In recent years, humanists across the globe have recognized that energy is a cultural and social as much as a scientific problem and have developed research agendas accordingly. To date, however, no single institution of higher education has created a coherent and integrated humanities research initiative focused on energy. Given the history and direction of humanistic energy scholarship, Rice has a particular opportunity to stake a significant claim in this area. We invite all interested faculty to take part in this discussion about Rice’s possible future in energy humanities research.
Innovations in Hydrocarbon Recover: From EOR to Flow Assurance — Walter Chapman
Economic recovery of hydrocarbons depends on technology to produce and transmit oil and gas to market. Challenges range from the molecular scale to the reservoir, platform, and pipeline scale. These include such areas as reservoir characterization, fluid characterization, multiphase flow, phase behavior, interfacial phenomena, brine chemistry, and large scale simulation. This discussion group will seek to link key issues for hydrocarbon recovery and transmission with opportunities to build teams at Rice.
Sustainability and Energy: John Anderson
This discussion will center on sustainability research at Rice and the programs of the Shell Center for Sustainability (SCS) center. The SCS seeks to create an interdisciplinary program of research, education, and outreach to identify and address potential threats to the sustainable development of living standards. These standards are interpreted broadly to encompass all factors affecting quality of life, including the continued availability of environmental resources and their human impact. In this session, faculty will work together to convey the breadth, impact, and nature of research in this area.
Energy and Environment: How Our Existing Curriculum Could Be Used and Expanded to Create Opportunities for New Courses and Student Experiences: Dagmar Beck
Realignment of the U.S. energy sector will occur over the next several decades due to increased importance of currently unconventional energy resources and deployment of new technologies for utilization of conventional forms of energy. This realignment will require a trained workforce with both science-based technical knowledge of a broad range of energy technologies, on-going research, and business skills. An effort is on-going at this time to provide a graduate degree track providing students with technical training including core skills in energy science and technology, covering both conventional and emerging energy technologies, as well as energy economics and policy. Students will receive training in project management, business, policy, and finance. The goal is to guide students in how to integrate conventional hydrocarbon systems with alternative energy sources,whereby emphasis should be given how conventional carbon-based energy resources can be transformed to become “green carbon”, i.e. an economic, environmental and socially sustainable energy resource. We need your reaction to industry feedback helping to determine what suggestions are within Rice’s interest for its students and its faculty.
Quantum effects in materials for energy: Doug Natelson
One vital component of addressing the energy challenge is the development of new materials, in addition to the engineering of existing compositions. In this discussion, we will highlight the materials synthesis, characterization, and theoretical understanding, as is relevant to materials related to energy, including opportunities in thermoelectrics and superconductivity. Rice’s particular strength here is in considering the broad class of materials with strong electronic correlations and quantum effects.
Session 3
Energy Analytics: A data-centric approach to energy-X: Jan Odegard and Kathy Ensor
The increasing complexity, diversity and wealth of data in the energy industry leads to a wide range of challenges for data analytics, data integration, modeling and simulation in support of resource management, increased efficiency and complex decision-making. In this break-out session we want to hear from all researchers involved in all phases of data analytics.
Microbiology in the Service of Energy Production and Storage: George Bennett
Microbes play an important role in a number of activities related to energy and environment. Among these are microbially enhanced oil recovery, microbial biofilms and corrosion problems, production of fuels and chemicals by microbes, use of available biomass or industrial waste by microbes, microbial contributions in cleanup of environmental situations related to the energy industry, microbial contributions to carbon dioxide production or use, and microbe-surface interactions relevant to fuel cells and sensors. We will discuss these and other possible topics in perspective to promote Rice’s future in this area.
Shale Gas and the Recovery of Unconventional Hydrocarbons — Walter Chapman
Production from unconventional hydrocarbon resources is needed to replace reserves from declining reservoirs. These unconventional hydrocarbon sources include oil sands, shale gas, shale oil, and gas hydrates. Such production and transmission creates new technological and environmental challenges beyond those related to carbon capture and sequestration. This discussion group will consider opportunities to address these challenges through collaborative research groups at Rice.
The Policy and Economic Impacts of Unconventional Hydrocarbons: Peter Hartley and Amy Jaffe
This session will discuss ongoing research at Rice on the energy market consequences and related policy questions that are arising from the growing importance of unconventional oil and gas on the global energy balance. The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy has engaged in geopolitical and economic modeling of the consequent effects of unconventional resources on energy prices, international relations among major nations, competition between energy sources, and environmental effects of energy use. This session will think about ways to broaden this research effort to include other unconventional hydrocarbons such as shale oil, Canadian oil sands, oil shale (kerogen) and methane hydrates. The role of technological change in lowering the production costs of unconventional resources is another area for cross disciplinary research in this area.
Carbon Capture, Sequestration and Management: Scott Wellington
Global and national standards-of-living, economic growth, employment and security depend on the availability of affordable energy supplies. Fossil fuels for electricity generation, motor fuel production and heating are abundantly available and relatively inexpensive. This discussion group will address the technical, political, social and economic issues to achieve pollution free use of fossil fuels during the transition to sustainable energy systems.
Urban Life and Energy Issues: Stephen L. Klineberg
The Kinder Institute and Energy and Environment Research: Sustainability, urban resiliency in the ability to cope with natural disasters, and the balancing of energy needs with the imperatives of environmental protection — these are indeed central issues facing cities around the world, and they are core concerns of the Kinder Institute. This discussion will explore how urban research can, and should, intersect energy and environmental research and consider what opportunities for Rice researchers interested in both areas.
Collaborative Energy Scholarship Across the Humanists, Sciences and Engineering — Dominic Boyer
Energy transitions are clearly technological, engineering, and policy problems. But energy transitions are just as much about the need to better understand habits, cultural values, ethics, political relationships, worldviews, practices and social institutions. The salience of these latter dimensions of energy transition (especially in terms of understanding resistance to the uptake of new technologies) suggest that much is to be gained from collaboration of energy science and engineering with energy humanities. It is often the case, however, that such collaboration is marginal to research design.
In the Cultures of Energy group we feel that Rice can distinguish itself among universities committed to energy science and engineering by establishing dialogue and collaborative cross-campus research as an essential component of its energy initiative. This workshop is exploratory, asking what the key elements and strategies of successful collaborative research design might be such that the expertise of the sciences, engineering and humanities could not only reinforce one another but also create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. We invite researchers from across campus to take part in this conversation.
Harvesting Energy from Sunlight: Materials and Systems — Naomi Halas and Rafael Verduzco
This discussion will focus on the development of new materials and systems for efficient utilization of solar energy. Researchers focusing on fundamental and applied aspects of biomimetic, organic, inorganic, and hybrid systems for solar energy conversion, including photovoltaics and numerous other energy transduction processes, are encouraged to attend. Nanoengineered approaches will be an important focus. We aim to focus on innovative areas, cross-cutting ideas that span current institutional foci (e.g., solar energy for global health technologies) and to build collaborative efforts in this broad area of research.
Reservoir Illumination and Intervention – New Materials and Sensing Strategies: Matteo Pasquali
Modification of reservoir fluid properties could lead to improved detection and recovery. Nanoparticles can effectively modify fluid properties (e.g., electrical conductivity, magnetic susceptibility, and viscosity); moreover, they are small enough to navigate tight rock pores. Realizing the potential of nanoparticles will require advances in surface chemistry (stabilization in extreme environment, targeting), physics (motion in tortous media, percolation in confined spaces), engineering (flow of complex fluids), and computational methods (signal propagation, inverse problems). We invite faculty interested in this area to discuss their work and potential collaborative strategies.