Muon borehole detector development for use in four-dimensional tomographic density monitoring

Update Item Information
Title Muon borehole detector development for use in four-dimensional tomographic density monitoring
Publication Type thesis
School or College College of Engineering
Department Civil & Environmental Engineering
Author Flygare, Joshua
Date 2016
Description The increase of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and the correlated temperature rise has initiated research into methods of carbon sequestration. One promising possibility is to store CO2 in subsurface reservoirs of porous rock. After injection, the monitoring of the injected CO2 is of paramount importance because the CO2 plume, if escaped, poses health and environmental risks. Traditionally, seismic reflection methods are the chosen method of determining changes in the reservoir density due to CO2 injection, but this is expensive and not continuous. A potential and promising alternative is to use cosmic muon tomography to determine density changes in the reservoir over a period of time. The work I have completed was the development of a muon detector that will be capable of being deployed in boreholes and perform long-term tomography of the reservoir of interest. The detector has the required dimensions, an angular resolution of approximately 2 degrees, and is robust enough to survive the caustic nature of the fluids in boreholes, as well as temperature and pressure fluctuations. The detector design is based on polystyrene scintillating rods arrayed in alternating layers. The layers, as arranged, can provide four-dimensional (4D) tomographic data to detect small changes in density at depths up to approximately 2 kilometers. Geant4, a Monte Carlo simulation code, was used to develop and optimize the detector design. Additionally, I developed a method of determining the muon flux at depth, including CO2 saturation changes in subsurface reservoirs. Preliminary experiments were performed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This thesis will show the simulations I performed to determine the angular resolution and background discrimination required of the detector, the experiments to determine light transport through the polystyrene scintillating rods and fibers, and the method developed to predict muon flux changes at depth expected after injection.
Type Text
Publisher University of Utah
Subject Borehole; Detector; Muon; Sequestration; Tomography
Dissertation Name Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering
Language eng
Rights Management ©Joshua Flygare
Format application/pdf
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 3,987,640 bytes
Identifier etd3/id/4189
ARK ark:/87278/s60w1n4h
Setname ir_etd
ID 197735
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s60w1n4h
Back to Search Results