Friday, April 11 2025, 3 - 4pm Geology Colloquium - GG Building 200A or via Zoom Colloquium Speaker: Peter Kang Title: Understanding Fluid Flow and Reactive Transport in Fractured Media Across Scales Hosted by: Charlotte Garing Abstract: Fluid flow and reactive transport in geologic fractures control many critical natural and engineered processes in the subsurface. For example, 99% of global unfrozen freshwater is stored in groundwater systems, and groundwater flow is often dominated by fracture flows. Also, engineered carbon mineralization is considered a key solution for climate change, and fractures serve as highways for the delivery of CO2 into mafic and ultramafic rocks, determining the efficiency of carbon mineralization. However, predicting transport processes in fractured porous media is challenging due to the multi-scale heterogeneity inherent to subsurface systems and the strong coupling between processes (i.e., coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical-biological-chemical processes). In this talk, I will present how my research group uses cutting-edge methods such as high-performance computing, microfluidic experiments, and field experiments to advance our fundamental understanding and predictive capability of coupled processes in fractured porous media. In particular, pore-scale flow effects on transport, mixing, and biogeochemical processes will be highlighted, and a contaminated fractured aquifer site which I have been developing as a teaching and research integrated site will be introduced. Bio: Peter Kang is an Associate Professor and the Gibson Chair of Hydrogeology in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota. He earned his BSc in 2008 from Seoul National University, followed by an MSc (2010) and a PhD (2014) from MIT. Dr. Kang has received several prestigious awards, including the InterPore Award for Porous Media Research (2025) from the InterPore Society, the Chin-Fu Tsang Coupled Processes Award from CouFrac (2022), and the NSF CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (2021). This is a hybrid event, if you are unable to join us in person please join via zoom. Meeting ID: 997 2477 2096 Note: A password is required to join this meeting. Please call the Geology office (706-542-2652) and speak with a representative to obtain the code. Alternatively, a code request can be made to UGA Geology. Pater Kiang Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences University of Minnesota
