GFZ German research centre for geo sciences

Software development

Implementing existent software applications into simulation infrastructures and developing tools to manage arbitrary data formats are essential parts of our modeling activities. Main focus of our conceptual software development activities is to establish innovative and practicable procedures based on engineering and geosciences, aiming at a valid linkage of different modules and software packages. An important prerequisite for the practical implementation is to optimize and match algorithms and data structures on computing time. Hereto, logical specifications and discrete mathematical structures are combined with suitable programming paradigms.

Groundwater salinization

Assessment of brine migration into shallower aquifers via permeable fault zones as a result of geological CO2 storage Pressure elevation in deep saline aquifers, for example, as a result of geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) may cause salinization of shallower freshwater resources by upward migration of displaced brine. This can happen, if the storage formation is hydraulically connected to potable groundwater, for instance by permeable fault zones serving as preferential leakage pathways.

Profitability analysis

Analyzing process cost effectiveness is an important component of applied research activities, since costs have a significant impact on the viability of research ideas.

Mineralising reactions in reservoirs

Currently observed climate change is to a large extent the result of the increased release of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. National and international climate protection programmes propagate avoiding carbon dioxide in the first place. The reinjection in geological structures of the subsurface could represent a supplement in the mid-term. An option for permanent CO2 storage offers mineral trapping, a process which converts CO2 into carbonates in a chemical reaction. So called mineral trapping mimics the natural processes of weathering of rocks.

Thermohaline processes in faulted basins

The expression “thermohaline processes” refers to the central role of groundwater in transferring energy (i.e. heat) and mass (i.e. solutes) over basin-scales (hundreds of km) and geological time periods (thousands or millions years). In this topic, numerical models and hydrochemical data are applied jointly to reveal the mechanisms causing environmental anomalies in real-case basin systems.

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