Shuangmei is new Postdoc in CERE and will be working on the project “Pore Scale Multiphase Dynamics Redefining Cyclic Hydrogen Storage from Pores to Reservoir (CYC-H2- FLOW)”
Underground hydrogen storage could help balance variable wind and solar power, but repeated injection, rest and withdrawal reorganise hydrogen and brine within rock pores. At the same overall gas content, hydrogen may form a connected pathway that can be recovered or isolated clusters that remain trapped. Current reservoir models represent this behaviour mainly through saturation-based relationships and empirical rules fitted to earlier cycles. They can reproduce known operating histories, but they cannot identify which present fluid structures control the next cycle. Predictions therefore become uncertain when the operating sequence changes.
CYC-H2-FLOW addresses a central question: where does a storage reservoir keep the memory of previous cycles? The project will test whether this memory is encoded in the present, measurable arrangement of hydrogen and brine, rather than only in a mathematical record of previous operations. It will measure the area where gas and water meet, whether gas pathways remain connected, and how gas clusters split or merge. High-speed microfluidic imaging and three-dimensional micro-computed tomography will track these features through repeated cycles. Image analysis and machine learning will then connect them to pressure, flow and hydrogen recovery. The resulting configuration-aware flow relationships will be tested in reservoir simulations under different injection, rest and withdrawal sequences.
Scientifically, the project will establish whether cyclic-flow memory has a measurable physical basis and will provide open datasets and reproducible methods. For industry, it could improve predictions of injection capacity, withdrawal performance, trapped hydrogen and operational risk beyond the cycles used for model calibration. For society, more reliable underground hydrogen storage would support safer, more efficient integration of wind and solar power into the energy system.
Shuangmei will collaborate with Associate Professors Xiaodong Liang and Alexander Shapiro, and she will have her office in building 229, room 242.