M.S. Student Wins International Paper Contest
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November 10, 2014
UT PGE master’s student Joseph Tansey placed first in the M.S. division at the 2014 International Student Paper Contest at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE), the premier annual oil and gas conference, in Amsterdam this past October.
Tansey’s paper details his graduate research, conducted through the Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering (CPGE), on modeling carbonate acidization.
“We use a pore network model to simulate how carbonate rocks dissolve, how their permeability changes and whether we can try to predict the optimal treatment strategy just from a CT scan of the rock,” Tansey said.
The winners of the 10 regional student paper contests are invited to participate in the international contest by submitting the winning regional paper to be included in the conference proceedings at ATCE.
“I did my best and had extensive help from my advisor, Associate Professor Matt Balhoff, and other faculty here at UT PGE,” Tansey said. “The other students all had very good presentations, but in the end I think my project’s technical merits pulled me through.”
Tansey's future goals include submitting his current research for publication and integrating the pore network model into a two-scale continuum model to simulate acidization and wormholing to improve the techniques used in the field.
