Unconventional reservoirs – organic-rich shales, tight gas sands, and other nanoporous formations – host a significant fraction of domestic hydrocarbon production but operate in a regime where the classical assumptions of subsurface flow break down. When pore diameters approach the nanometer scale, the continuum description of fluid flow becomes invalid: molecular interactions between fluid and pore walls dominate over bulk fluid-fluid interactions, slip flow and Knudsen diffusion become significant transport mechanisms, and apparent permeability becomes a function of fluid type, pressure, and temperature, not geometry alone.
Shale and tight-rock systems are dominated by pore networks below the resolution of conventional petrophysical tools. Hydrocarbon storage, deliverability, and connectivity all live in the nano- and micro-scale fabric of organic matter, clay platelets, and microfracture networks – features that traditional plug-scale measurements average away.
We bring extensive published expertise in the multi-scale characterization, image-based modeling, and pore-scale simulation of nanoporous reservoir rocks. The methodology developed for shales now extends to critical-mineral systems through our active research program. The imaging, modeling, and simulation workflow is the same; the rocks, the fluids, and the reactions differ. The fundamental insight is shared: in any porous system where pore geometry, mineral composition, and dynamic alteration co-determine fluid behavior, the predictive framework must be derived from the pore scale.
We characterize rock microstructure across scales using a hierarchical imaging workflow: micro-CT, SEM/EDS, FIB-SEM nanotomography, and S/TEM. Correlative registration across modalities produces unified multi-scale representations of rock samples.
Machine-/deep-learning segmentation and 3D model reconstruction for complex multi-phase mineral and pore systems. Image-derived models become direct inputs to physics-based simulation.
Single- and multi-phase fluid flow, slip-flow and Knudsen-regime transport, and reactive transport in nanoconfined pore systems on the digital rock.
Universities, national labs, and research institutions:
We welcome partnership on current and future research projects in oil & gas recovery, subsurface transport, and digital rock physics.