Facility for high temperature, high pressure rheology of geomaterials

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The flow of geomaterials through the natural environment is of great societal and economic importance. Understanding the flow of these materials - such as magma, submarine sediments, drilling muds, and fluids associated with carbon capture and storage (CCS) - is essential if we are to forecast volcanic eruptions, protect undersea telecoms infrastructure, and lower the impacts of fossil fuel production and use. The key to understanding and predicting flow behaviour lies in accurate measurements of 'rheology', which describes how a material deforms when a force acts on it. This project will create a facility for measuring the rheology of geomaterials, train academic and industrial researchers from the UK's Earth and environmental sciences community to use it, and act as a forum for knowledge exchange in the field of rheology and flow of geomaterials.Geomaterials are often complex. For example, magma is made up of three different phases - molten rock, solid crystals, and deformable gas bubbles - and their relative proportions change as the magma rises through the Earth's crust, decompresses, and cools down. It is common for all geomaterials to change their rheology as they experience extreme variations in temperature and pressure as they move through the upper crust, or across the ocean floor. As a result, the rheology of geomaterials is highly complex, requiring specialist equipment to measure it. It is also essential to be able to measure it over a wide range of pressures and temperatures. There is currently no facility available in the UK that can do this.The new facility is unique because:1. It can operate over temperatures from -100C to +1600C covering the full range of temperatures found on the Earth's surface, from Antarctic ice-sheets to volcanic lava flows.2. It can operate at pressures up to 1000 times greater than atmospheric pressure, up to 300C. This covers pressures and temperatures in the deepest oceans, and the deepest boreholes in the Earth's crust.3. It includes a unique instrument, capable of measuring rheology while replicating the complex changes in flow speed and direction that are common in natural environmental flows. The manufacturer will work with us to validate this functionality and extend it from 600C to 1000C so that we can replicate complex flows of magma.4. The facility will link in with extensive existing equipment at Durham University that can be used to measure other properties of geomaterials at high temperature, such as the growth or melting of different crystals, changes to the internal structure, and physical properties of drilling muds.The facility will be used by researchers from across the UK to solve a wide range of problems, such as:* What controls where lava flows go? This depends on the rheology of lava as it cools and solidifies.* How can we protect aircraft jet engines from airborne particles? This depends on the mechanical properties of the material produced when the particles weld together in the engine.* How do we reduce the environmental impact of drilling for extraction of resources or energy? We can engineer effective water-based drilling muds with much lower environmental impact than current oil-based muds. We can also develop effective strategies for pumping captured CO2 into crustal storage reservoirs to reduce its climate impact. Both applications depend on measuring the rheological behaviour of geomaterials at the high pressures and temperatures found in the crust.The UK has a large, world-leading community of researchers working on environmental flows involving geomaterials. We will promote the facility as a hub for this research by making it available at cost-price to internal and external users, and by running training and knowledge exchange workshops to bring researchers from universities and industry together. We will support users in preparing research projects that use the facility, and keep an open repository of outputs and data.