Imperial College London was established in 1907 by the signing of a Royal Charter - combining the Royal School of Mines (1851), the Royal College of Science (1881) and the City and Guilds College (Engineering, 1884). Imperial is a science-based university with an international reputation for excellence in teaching and research.

Imperial College London's involvement is led by the Minerals, Energy and Environmental Engineering Research Group (MERG) based in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering, a multi-disciplinary department, integrating fundamental earth science research with related petroleum, minerals and environmental engineering.

MERG is internationally recognised as a multi-disciplinary centre of excellence through its research into reservoir characterisation, conventional/unconventional fossil fuels production performance and risk assessment, multiphase and compositional simulator development, Life Cycle environmental impacts, and clean energy and CO2 storage technologies since the mid 80’s.

People

Professor Sevket Durucan

Professor Sevket DurucanProfessor Durucan holds the Chair of Mining and Environmental Engineering at Imperial College and a member of the UKCCSRC. He has over 40 years’ experience in mineral resources production, environment and clean coal and energy technologies. He has introduced reservoir geomechanics principles to coal mine methane, coalbed methane and CO2 storage technologies. Over the past 30 years, Prof Durucan coordinated 20 EU research projects as well as participating in over 20 other EU projects, besides leading numerous UK Research Council and industry funded research. He has over 180 academic publications in refereed journals, books and conference proceedings. He supervised and graduated 45 PhD students over 30 years at Imperial College.

Professor Anna Korre

Professor Anna KorreProfessor Korre holds a chair in Environmental Engineering, is the co-Director of Energy Futures Lab and a member of the UKCCSRC. Anna heads the MERG research group with 15 researchers. Her core research expertise is in the areas of modelling risk and uncertainty and the environmental and life cycle assessment of engineering systems. Anna managed and participated in numerous UK Research Council and EU funded projects on CO2 storage performance and risk assessment, life cycle assessment and cost modelling of conventional and unconventional fossil fuel based power generation, CO2 capture, transport, injection and storage systems. She has led the development of a Real Options Analysis methodology and an optimisation tool for scenario planning and valuation of emergent UKCS CO2 transport and storage systems.

Dr Ji Quan Shi

Dr Shi is a Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London. He obtained a MEng (honours) in Mechanical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao-Tong University and a PhD from the University of Southampton. He has over 25 years of experience in coalbed methane enhanced coalbed methane and CO2 storage research and simulator development, in particular reservoir engineering and geomechanics and has managed many of EU, national government, research council, and industry sponsored research projects at Imperial College.

Dr Zhenggang Nie

Dr Nie is a Research Fellow in the Minerals, Energy and Environmental Engineering Research Group with long standing expertise and experience in Life Cycle Cost and Life Cycle Impact Modelling of CO2 Capture and Geological Storage in fossil fuel production and power generation systems. Originally trained as a computer scientist and an economist, Dr Nie developed Imperial College’s in-house life cycle cost and real options optimisation models for CCS.

Dr Wenzhuo Cao

Wenzhuo CaoDr Cao is a Research Associate in the Minerals, Energy and Environmental Engineering Research Group with expertise and experience in geomechanics, reservoir engineering and mining engineering. His core research expertise is in the areas of two-way and fully-coupled multiphysics modelling and seismicity monitoring and evaluation associated with geo-energy exploitation. He has over 30 academic publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings.

Dr Wu Cai

Wu CaiDr. Cai is a Visiting Researcher in the Minerals, Energy and Environmental Engineering Research Group with expertise and experience in geomechanics, microseismic monitoring and mining engineering. His core research expertise is in the areas of mining engineering related to fault reactivation and its associated acoustic emission/microseismic responses to rock burst and coal and gas outburst, and fluid injection-induced seismicity in geothermal production. He has over 40 academic publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings.

Mr Harshit Agrawal

Harshit AgrawalMr Agrawal is a Research Assistant in the Minerals, Energy and Environmental Engineering Research Group with expertise and experience in geomechanics, laboratory analysis and mining engineering. His core research expertise is in the areas of coupled numerical modelling, laboratory characterisation and risk assessment for application in carbon capture and sequestration, geothermal energy, underground coal gasification and deep underground mining. He has over 20 academic publications in referred journals and conference proceedings.