Facility for high temperature, high pressure rheology of geomaterials

地质物质在自然环境中的流动具有重要的社会和经济意义。如果我们要预测火山爆发、保护海底电信基础设施以及降低化石燃料生产和使用的影响，了解这些物质——如岩浆、海底沉积物、钻井泥浆以及与碳捕获和储存（CCS）相关的流体——的流动是至关重要的。理解和预测流动行为的关键在于对“流变学”的精确测量，流变学描述了材料在受到外力作用时如何变形。该项目将创建一个测量岩土材料流变学的设施，培训来自英国地球和环境科学界的学术和工业研究人员使用它，并作为流变学和岩土材料流动领域知识交流的论坛。地质材料通常是复杂的。例如，岩浆由三个不同的阶段组成——熔融岩石、固体晶体和可变形的气泡——它们的相对比例随着岩浆穿过地壳上升、减压和冷却而变化。对于所有的地质材料来说，当它们穿过上层地壳或穿过海底时，会经历温度和压力的极端变化，从而改变它们的流变性是很常见的。因此，地质材料的流变学非常复杂，需要专门的设备来测量。能够在很宽的压力和温度范围内测量它也是必不可少的。目前在英国还没有这样的设施。新设施的独特之处在于：它可以在零下100摄氏度到1600摄氏度的温度范围内工作，覆盖了地球表面从南极冰盖到火山熔岩流的全部温度范围。它可以在比大气压力大1000倍的压力下工作，最高可达300摄氏度。这包括最深的海洋中的压力和温度，以及地壳中最深的钻孔。它包括一个独特的仪器，能够测量流变学，同时复制在自然环境流动中常见的流动速度和方向的复杂变化。制造商将与我们合作验证这一功能，并将其从600℃扩展到1000℃，这样我们就可以复制复杂的岩浆流。该设备将与杜伦大学现有的大量设备相连接，这些设备可用于测量高温下岩土材料的其他特性，例如不同晶体的生长或熔化、内部结构的变化以及钻井泥浆的物理特性。来自英国各地的研究人员将利用该设施来解决一系列问题，例如：*是什么控制着熔岩流的流向？这取决于熔岩冷却和凝固时的流变性。*我们如何保护飞机喷气发动机不受空气颗粒的影响？这取决于颗粒在发动机中焊接时产生的材料的机械性能。*我们如何减少钻探开采资源或能源对环境的影响？我们可以设计出有效的水基钻井泥浆，与目前的油基泥浆相比，对环境的影响要小得多。我们还可以制定有效的策略，将捕获的二氧化碳泵入地壳储存库，以减少其对气候的影响。这两种应用都依赖于测量地壳中高压和高温下地质材料的流变行为。英国有一个庞大的、世界领先的研究团体，研究涉及地质材料的环境流动。我们将推动该设施成为这项研究的中心，使其以成本价提供给内部和外部用户，并举办培训和知识交流讲习班，将大学和工业界的研究人员聚集在一起。我们将支持用户准备使用该设施的研究项目，并保持一个开放的产出和数据存储库。

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.