Directorate

Stuart Haszeldine is the current Director of SCCS and the worlds first Professor of CCS, he is one of the key driving forces behind establishing CCS as a new industry in the UK, EU and worldwide. Stuart has over 35 years research experience in energy and environment; innovating new approaches to oil and gas extraction, radioactive waste disposal, carbon capture and storage, and biochar in soils. Stuart provides advice to both UK and Scottish governments. He was elected FRSE in 2002, awarded the Geological Society William Smith Medal in 2011 and in 2012 was appointed OBE for services to climate change technologies.

Key CCS Research

Evaluation of carbon capture and storage projects, subsurface storage of carbon dioxide. Movement and geochemistry of fluids in porous and fractured sedimentary rocks. Management of geological carbon. Radioactive waste storage. Energy supply. Shale gas. Compressed air storage. Climate Engineering.

Eric Mackay holds the Energi Simulation Chair in CCUS & Reactive Flow Simulation in the Institute of GeoEnergy Engineering at Heriot-Watt University, where he has worked since 1990. He is involved in projects identifying methods for calculating secure CO₂ storage potential in saline formations and depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs.

Key CCS Research

Flow in porous media, brine geochemistry and mineral reactions, reactive flow simulation, CO₂ storage reservoir engineering and simulation, CO₂ plume migration and reservoir pressure management, permanent CO₂ and temporary H₂ storage in mature hydrocarbon basins, prevention of formation and wellbore damage in hydrocarbon, CCS, H₂ and geothermal GeoEnergy systems.
 

Maxine is a geologist at the British Geological Survey with extensive experience in offshore and onshore geological research and modelling, specialising in CO₂ storage research since 2008. She is a highly experienced Project Leader and leads, manages and contributes to applied geoscience research projects. Currently, Maxine leads effective and optimal use of subsurface geological resources for offshore subsurface energy storage in the MOET project and site selection for the BGS and UKRI CO₂ Storage Research Facility. She leads science development for the CO₂Stored UK national CO₂storage database and is the Scottish Academic Cluster Lead in the Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre. Maxine has led three Scottish CCS studies funded by consortia of industry and government, and UK case studies in the EU- and UK-funded ALIGN-CCUS industrial CCS and ELEGANCY hydrogen and CCS projects.

Key CCS Research

Maxine's key areas of research interest include: CO₂ storage site screening, selection, and appraisal; CO₂ storage site performance and risk assessment; leader of storage site characterisation (multi-disciplinary modelling) to meet regulatory requirements; communication of CO₂ storage site appraisal by Storage Readiness Levels.

Clare Bond is a structural geologists whose research interests span uncertainty in interpretation of geological data through to deformation mechanisms and the interaction of fluids with other crustal processes. She leads an international group of researchers whose work is funded through industry collaborations, research councils and other organisations. Clare also has interests in how society and societal perceptions influence energy choices.

Key CCS Research

Natural CO₂ leakage as analogues for CO₂ flux; and implication for storage sites. Fault and fracture permeability as CO₂ fast or slow pathways in the crust; including reactive transport. Seismic interpretation and imaging of CO₂. Site characterisation and uncertainty modelling. Societal perceptions of CCS and energy technologies.

Dr Jen Roberts is a Senior Lecturer and Chancellor’s Fellow in Energy at the University of Strathclyde. Jen works in the interdisciplinary field of energy systems and technical, social and environmental risk - with particular focus on net-zero subsurface resources including CO₂ storage.

Key CCS Research

CO₂ storage security, efficiency, and monitoring. The role of CCS in a sustainable and fair future.

Florian Doster is Professor for Multi-Scale Multi-Phase Flow Modelling in the Institute of GeoEnergy Engineering at Heriot-Watt University and Program Director for the MSc program Subsurface Energy Systems. His research interests include the study of multi-physics multi-phase flow phenomena in porous media and their appropriate physical and mathematical description across length and time scales. He focuses on applications related to the energy transition in particular CO₂ storage and phenomena around flow in fractured porous media in particular with respect to mechanical and thermal coupling. With respect to modelling concepts he focuses on dual continuum representations, vertically integrated approaches as well as flow diagnostics. 

Key CCS Research

Efficient but accurate models, hydro-mechanical-thermal coupling, long-term storage safety
 

Andreas Busch integrates flow properties with geochemistry, petrophysics, physical chemistry, geomechanics and geology to understand and de-risk carbon storage, geothermal and hydrogen storage. This involves laboratory, field and analytical/numerical modelling to upscale problems to the reservoir scale. Prior to joining Heriot-Watt University in 2016, he coordinated several large scale research projects combining theoretical, laboratory and field based work within Shell Global Solutions in the Netherlands. Since joining Heriot-Watt in 2016, he has been in charge of the GeoEnergy lab, dealing with CCS, unconventional reservoirs, energy storage and geothermal energy.

Key CCS Research

Hydro-chemical-mechanical coupling in CO₂ and hydrogen storage, geothermal energy production as well as reservoir seals integrity assessment.

Susana García is Professor of Chemical and Process Engineering and Deputy Head of the Institute of Mechanical, Process and Energy Engineering at Heriot-Watt University, which she joined in May 2014. She is also the Associate Director in Carbon Capture and Storage at the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions (RCCS), an interdisciplinary world leading engineering centre, inspiring and delivering innovation for the wider deployment of technologies needed to meet necessary carbon targets. Her current research focuses on advancing materials and separation processes for energy, industrial and environmental applications. She ambitions to change the paradigm on how novel processes based on advanced materials are developed through the integration of process engineering and basic science.

Key CCS Research

Development of processes and sorbent materials for energy efficient CO₂ capture; Greenhouse Removal Technologies including Direct Air Capture; Gas separation; Big data Science; Biogas upgrading systems; Process intensification, integration and techno-economic analyses of advanced separation processes; CO₂ storage by different trapping mechanisms; and CO₂ utilization.

Gioia Falcone is Rankine Chair, Professor of Energy Engineering at the University of Glasgow, where she leads the Energy and Sustainability Research Group and is Associate Director of the Centre for Sustainable Solutions. She is also Visiting Professor at Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London and Guest Professor for the Energy Management MBA at the Technical University of Berlin.  Until June 2018, she was Professor and Head of the Geo-Energy Engineering Centre at Cranfield University. Between 2011 and early 2016, she held the Endowed Chair and Professorship in Geothermal Energy Systems at Clausthal University of Technology, Germany, where she was also the Director of the Institute of Petroleum Engineering. Gioia was formerly an Assistant and then Associate Professor in Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University, Chevron Corporation Faculty Fellow and faculty member of the Ocean Drilling and Sustainable Earth Science partnership. Prior to joining academia, she worked with Eni-Agip, Enterprise Oil UK, Shell E&P UK and Total E&P UK, covering both offshore and onshore assignments. She holds a Laurea Summa Cum Laude in Environmental-Georesources engineering from Sapienza University of Rome, a M.Sc. degree in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College London and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London. She has served on several expert review panels, as technical editor/reviewer for several peer-review journals, and as member of several program committees of technical conferences around the world. Along with being actively engaged with the energy transition activities of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, she is Vice-Chairperson of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Bureau of the Expert Group on Resource Management. The group has overseen the development of the Specifications for the Application of the UNFC to Injection Projects for the Purpose of Geological Storage and to Geothermal Energy Resources.

Key CCS Research

Geo-energy engineering; integrated and hybrid energy systems; sustainable energy solutions at community scale; assessment of the carbon capture potential of depleted hydrocarbon fields and saline aquifers; technical and economic feasibility of EOR offshore; CO₂ transport and injection; CO₂ flow modelling and measurement.

Prof Hannah Chalmers is Deputy Director of Learning and Teaching for Interdisciplinary Courses a the Institute for Energy Systems at the School of Engineering. She received her PhD in Environmental Strategy from the University of Surrey in 2010. 

Key CCS Research
Communicating CCS to non-specialists, contibuting to improved understanding of likely power plant performance with CO₂ capture, developing CO₂ transport infrastructure, techno-economic analysis of CCS in electricity systems, and contributes to efforts to determine if and how it could be appropriate to use CCS in developing countries.