October 2011 Newsletter - petroleum engineering colorado school ...

FACULTY LETTERSYU-SHU WU - CMG CHAIRYu-Shu with graduating seniors, Victoria Marques and Harrison Godwin atWhitney Dedeluk’s graduation partyMy third year as a PE faculty member at CSM turned out tobe a very good year for me. While maintaining high-levelactivities academically, I enjoyed more and more teachingand life, in general, of Colorado. The highlights of the pastyear for me must have been when I saw so many happy facesof our graduating seniors in December and May as well as Ihad my first Ph.D student graduated at CSM.In the past year, I devoted most of my efforts and time tothe research in the two areas: (1) develop new fundedresearch projects/programs and (2) carry out state-ofthe-artof research in reservoir simulation and in energyresources in general. Our new PE research team, the EnergyModeling Group (EMG), established the year before, hasgrown significantly in its research activities, volume,XIAOLONG YINXiaolong on the steps of an ancient Roman Coliseum in Arles, Provenceand outcomes. EMG now consists of 7 team members ofgraduate students, faculty members, post-doctoral fellows,and visiting scholars. The mission of the EMG is to developand promote reservoir modeling technology and simulationtools in research, teaching, and application in the fields ofsubsurface energy and natural resources, and environmentalscience and engineering.One milestone accomplished by EMG in the past year wascompletion of the development of a CO2-EOR reservoirsimulator, sponsored by PetroChina after a two-year effort.In addition, significant progresses have been made on ourtwo major DOE-funded, multi-year research projects on CO2sequestration and geothermal engineering in the efforts tocouple rock mechanics with multiphase fluid flow and heattransfer in reservoirs.Also, I am very happy to report to you that there is a suddenjump in my scientific productivity, since I joined CSM in 2008.In the past academic year alone, for example, I authored andco-authored 20+ publications with 10 peer-reviewed journalpapers published.In the coming year, I would expect more interactions betweenEMG, PE faculty, students, and our alumni to enhance ourEMG modeling capabilities in energy related fields of thePE department, such as conventional and unconventionalpetroleum reservoir simulation, geothermal systems, andCO2 sequestration. Ultimately, we will develop a CSMreservoir simulation system for our teaching and research.It is amazing how fast another year has passed! What arethe marks that I left in the year of 2010-2011? On my job,both teaching and research activities are going reasonablywell. I enjoyed my time spent in PEGN 310 Reservoir FluidProperties, PEGN 511 Advanced Fluid Properties and PhaseBehavior, and PEGN 315 Field Session trip to Houston thisMay 2011 with Dr. Ozkan. This 2011 fall semester, I amco-teaching PEGN 310 with Dr. Hoffman, and PEGN 414Well Testing with Dr. Ozkan and Dr. Wu. On the researchside, thanks for the hard working students, the projectshave been progressing steadily, and some new excitingtopics and projects are emerging in cryogenic fracturing,porous media flow, and suspensions. Some of my graduatestudents’ work will be presented at the 2011 SPE ATCE andthe 2011 Canadian Unconventional Resource Conference aswell as American Physical Society Meetings. A manuscripton synthetic porous media experimental model will be17