Franklin M. He was director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford from its establishment in to His research activities focus on how complex fluid mixtures flow in the porous rocks in the Earth's crust, the design of gas injection processes for enhanced oil recovery, and CO2 storage in subsurface formations. Orr is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
He served as vice chair of the board of directors of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute until and rejoined that board in He chaired the Advisory Panel of the Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation until , rejoining that panel in , and was a foundation board member from Research My students and I work to understand the physical mechanisms that control flow of multiphase, multicomponent fluids in the subsurface, using a combination of experiments and theory.
The theory part includes numerical simulation of flow in heterogeneous porous rocks and coalbeds, often using streamline approaches, and it also involves solving by analytical methods the differential equations that describe the interactions of complex phase equilibrium and flow porous rocks containing more than one flowing phase can sometimes act like a chromatograph, separating components as they flow.
The experiments are used to test how well the models describe reality. Applications of this work range from enhanced oil and gas recovery to geologic storage of carbon dioxide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the transport of contaminants in aquifers. Teaching I teach a courses for graduate students on the mathematics of multiphase, multicomponent flow in porous media and on the thermodynamics of phase behavior.
I also teach an undergraduate course on energy for freshmen. View details for DOI View details for Web of Science ID In addition, a chimney-like coupled air-intake and exhaust outlet system feeding the combustion of the coal seam was confirmed. This can be used to further develop strategies for extinguishing the fire. View details for PubMedID The possibility that substantial quantities of CO2 can be injected into subsurface porous rock formations has been investigated sufficiently to show that pore space available to contain the CO2 is abundant.
