UT Tyler to Help Improve Carbon Emission Effects on Environment With DOE Grant
October 26, 2023
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UT Tyler to Help Improve Carbon Emission Effects on Environment With DOE Grant
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The University of Texas at Tyler received a $714,125 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to help lessen the impacts of carbon dioxide, or CO2, emissions on the Earth’s climate. Dr. Aaditya Khanal, an assistant professor in the UT Tyler Jasper Department of Chemical Engineering, serves as the project’s principal investigator.
“Probing CO2 Dissolution and Mineralization in Deep Saline Aquifers with Experiment and Simulation” will use fundamental and applied research that will help improve the understanding of the various aspects of CO2 sequestration in geological formations. Researchers from UT Austin’s petroleum and geosystems engineering department and students from both institutions will collaborate with Khanal on the three-year project.
“The experimental data, simulation results and data-driven models expected from this project will be instrumental in improving the current technologies involved in sequestering CO2 in deep saline aquifers,” Khanal said. “The outcomes will broaden public knowledge about the various aspects of energy generation, carbon emissions and the technologies that can mitigate the impact of these emissions.”
Underground sequestration of CO2 released from significant point sources, such as power plants and heavy industries, Khanal noted, is a possible technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
This project aims to examine dissolution and mineralization trapping mechanisms, which are critical to ensure the long-term storage of CO2 in subsurface formations, such as deep saline aquifers, using experimental, numerical and data-driven approaches, according to Khanal.
“This project will yield transferable insights to improve current and future CO2 geo-sequestration projects, which are critical to meet our climate goals without a sudden disruption to the existing energy infrastructure,” he added.
Khanal joined the UT Tyler faculty in 2020. He focuses on the areas of energy, environment and data science. Other research focus areas include oil and gas production forecasting, phase behavior modeling and machine learning applications. His research has also garnered grants for UT Tyler from the National Science Foundation, VentureWells Foundation, P&G Foundation and American Chemical Society.
He holds master’s and doctorate degrees in chemical engineering, with a research emphasis on reservoir simulation and engineering, from the University of Houston. At UT Tyler, Khanal teaches chemical engineering, thermodynamics and mass transfer courses.
The mission of the U.S. Department of Energy is to ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. For more information, visit energy.gov/.
With a mission to improve educational and health care outcomes for East Texas and beyond, UT Tyler offers more than 90 undergraduate and graduate programs to nearly 10,000 students. Through its alignment with UT Tyler Health Science Center and UT Health East Texas, UT Tyler has unified these entities to serve Texas with quality education, cutting-edge research and excellent patient care. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News & World Report as a national university, UT Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.