Mastering the subsurface has been central to the Los Alamos mission for over 60 years, first for containment and monitoring of our own underground testing, and more recently to monitor and assess seismic events for treaty verification. The Laboratory has unique monitoring and diagnostic tools, predictive models of rock behavior, and simulators that can predict the complex couplings between fluid flow, chemical reactions, and mechanical deformation.
Today, Los Alamos leverages these capabilities to support sustainable unconventional fossil resource extraction, carbon management, subsurface environment remediation and management, and geothermal energy. The Laboratory is also developing high performance computing tools and fundamental science to understand what limits oil and gas production and how the subsurface can be manipulated for more efficient and effective recovery of resources.
Research Areas
- Developing and applying models to predict flow and transport of multi-phase fluids in subsurface porous and fractured media
- Improving geothermal and oil/gas extraction
- Infrastructure-pipeline modeling, optimization, (orphan) oil and gas well detection and remediation
- Environmental project management, remediation and restoration
- Radionuclide geochemistry, mineral physics and engineering
- Underground hydrogen storage
- Carbon capture, transport, and storage
- Researching chemical interactions with time, the environment, and movement through soil, rock, and water/fluids
Key Capabilities
- AI and machine learning methods and analytics
- High performance and supercomputing
- Advanced seismic imaging and interpretation
- Nonlinear acoustics, signal modeling and analysis
- Subsurface fluid flow and geochemistry characterization
- Open-source tool sets for science-informed decision making
Consortia
Los Alamos collaborates with industry, academia, and other national laboratories on developing innovative subsurface energy technologies through the following consortia and initiatives:
- Consortium Advancing Technology for Assessment of Los Oil & Gas Wells (CATALOG)
- National Risk Assessment Partnership (NRAP)
- Science-informed Machine Learning for Accelerating Real-Time Decisions in Subsurface Applications (SMART)
- Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE)
- Carbon Capture Simulation for Industry Impact (CCSI2)