Scientists from the Energy Geosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have released the latest version of TOUGH (Transport Of Unsaturated Groundwater and Heat), a suite of software codes used worldwide to simulate nonisothermal multiphase flow and transport in fractured and porous media. TOUGH3 builds on the impressive legacy of its TOUGH predecessors, which…
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Berkeley Lab’s ‘farm of the future’ project marries microbiology and machine learning
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In February EESA Staff Scientist Tim Kneafsey helped escort leadership from the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy on a journey 4,850 feet below the ground. They toured Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), an old South Dakota gold mine turned testing ground for studying how the process of extracting heat from rocks…
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Researchers from the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Berkeley Lab are being recognized for developing advanced scientific tools that can inform how to sustainably remediate soil and groundwater contamination. Such remediation has become increasingly difficult in the wake of extreme climate events such as flooding. Hurricane Harvey, for example, caused flooding in 13 EPA-designated…
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New research from the Energy Geosciences Division at Berkeley Lab shows that carbon dioxide can penetrate the inner layers of some non-swelling clay minerals which make up the dominant clays in the Earth's deep subsurface. Results of the work performed at the Center for Nanoscale Controls on Geologic CO2 (NCGC) and the national lab’s Molecular Foundry could help inform practices intended to help limit carbon dioxide emissions, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
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Scientists from the Energy Geosciences Division at Berkeley Lab are part of a research team led by Texas A&M University that is working to develop a new field laboratory in the hydrocarbon-producing geological formation known as Eagle Ford Shale. Their work is focused on increased recovery from previously fractured wells that were left behind because of low production, and has the potential to foster continued growth in U.S. oil production, but with a much lower environmental footprint.
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Berkeley Lab scientists took a key role in publishing an exhaustive scientific report on the safety and long-term viability of underground natural gas storage in California, requested by Gov. Brown in the aftermath of the largest methane leak in U.S. history at the Southern California Aliso Canyon UGS more than two years ago.
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Pierpaolo Marchesini was one of four EESA postdocs to address the Meet your Postdoc session on Thursday, November 16, a brown-bag lunch series designed to acquaint senior scientists with EESA postdocs and their significant contributions to Berkeley Lab. Nkosi Muse sat down with Pierpaolo to discuss the work he does at Berkeley Lab using acoustic…
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More than 75 participants from across all six areas of Berkeley Lab attended a half-day workshop on December 1 to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with ecosystem sensing and characterization. Hosts Eoin Brodie, Senior Scientist, Ecology Department, and research scientist Yuxin Wu, opened the morning workshop with an explanation of the work underway by Lab researchers…
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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown for the first time that dark fiber – the vast network of unused fiber-optic cables installed throughout the country and the world – can be used as sensors for detecting earthquakes, the presence of groundwater, changes in permafrost conditions, and…
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