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Tool created at Geosciences Measurement Facility Enables Unprecedented Look at Subsurface Rock Fractures1 min read

by Christina Procopiou on June 1, 2018

GC-Sustainable Earth Geothermal Systems Uncategorized

A new instrument developed at the Geosciences Measurement Facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will help scientists working to identify ways to improve enhanced geothermal systems technologies to expand access to clean energy.

Two of the instruments, called SIMFIP (Step-Rate Injection Method for Fracture In-Situ Properties), were installed in late May nearly 5,000 feet below ground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota. SURF has become an essential testing ground for the Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) Collab Project, a collaboration of eight national labs and six universities exploring the potential to improve enhanced geothermal systems technologies led by Berkeley Lab.

The installations mark an important milestone for EGS Collab Project researchers focused on improving the understanding and modeling of rock fractures in geothermal environments. SIMFIP is the first tool to allow researchers to measure the aperture of a rock fracture. With better information about how rocks behave in the Earth’s subsurface, EGS technologies stand a better chance of fulfilling their potential to provide enough energy to power 100 million American homes.

Watch this video about the making of SIMFIP at GMF.

News & Events

Study Sheds Light on Microbial Communities in Earth’s Subsurface2 min read

August 16, 2023

  From the tops of tree canopies to the bottom of groundwater reservoirs, a vast amount of living organisms interact with nonliving components such as rock, water, and soil to shape this area of Earth known as the “critical zone.” Over half of Earth’s microbes are located in the subsurface critical zone, which ranges from…

Carl Steefel Honored in Goldschmidt Session on Reactive Transport2 min read

August 2, 2023

The contributions of Carl Steefel to the reactive transport modeling scientific community were recognized in a session held in his honor at the recent Goldschmidt 2023 conference (Lyon, France). Goldschmidt is the foremost annual, international conference on geochemistry and related subjects, organized by the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society. The session was…

DOE Funds Projects to Advance Forest Carbon Dioxide Removal Efforts and Agricultural Soil Carbon Conservation4 min read

August 1, 2023

The DOE Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) recently announced $5 million in funding for four projects–two from Berkeley Lab with EESA leadership. The projects selected offer “promising solutions” to the nation’s climate change challenges by helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will “accelerate their deployment…

Quantifying the strength of the land carbon sink3 min read

July 26, 2023

This article first appeared at nature.berkeley.edu/news. The world’s forests, grasslands, and other terrestrial ecosystems have played a substantial role in offsetting human carbon emissions—a capability that UC Berkeley researchers say would be threatened by continued global change. The assessment, published today as a new review paper in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, presents a comprehensive analysis of…

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