IIT Roorkee set ups Rock and Fluid Multi-Physics Laboratory

The lab can handle characterisation challenges of the oil and gas reservoir in routine and complex formations, including the hydrates and the geothermal systems.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee has established a state-of-the-art laboratory named ‘Rock & Fluid Multiphysics Laboratory’. The laboratory was inaugurated by Padma Bhushan Vijay Kumar Saraswat, Member, NITI Aayog, in the presence of IIT Roorkee Director Ajit K Chaturvedi, Deputy Director Manoranjan Parida and SRIC Dean Akshay Dwivedi. 

The 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 exploit conventional and unconventional energy resources. 

The laboratory has a low-frequency system that provides dynamic estimates of the seismic rock property response in the range of 0.1 Hz to 3000 Hz, under insitu conditions. This simulates the insitu reservoir under hydrostatic assumptions.  

The Pseudo Triaxial Setup provides the static (0 Hz) estimates of the elastic and the associated geo-mechanical attributes in the formations of mineral deposits under more realistic subsurface conditions. The lab can handle characterisation 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.  

Lab can carry out carbon utilisation, storage feasibility studies 

The lab can also carry out carbon utilisation and storage feasibility studies for formations such as shales, organic-rich resources, carbonates, coals, saline aquifers, coals, and volcanic rocks. Hence, this lab can prove to be of significant value addition in helping the geoscientist and petroleum engineers in having an insight into the physical processes happening inside the earth and make well-constrained decisions with minimum possible uncertainty. 

Ajit K Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee, said, “The Rock and Fluid Multi-physics Laboratory at IIT Roorkee is ideally located near the Himalayan Mountain ranges and very close to the headquarters of ONGC. This lab will significantly contribute to the petroleum engineering profession, groundwater exploration and resource characterisation. This will help towards a sustainable approach in energy exploration.” 

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