ZERT has made major contributions to five main areas of sequestration science: improvement of computational tools; measurement and monitoring techniques to verify storage and track migration of CO{sub 2}; development of a comprehensive performance and risk assessment framework; fundamental geophysical, geochemical and hydrological investigations of CO{sub 2} storage; and investigate innovative, bio-based mitigation strategies.

This Final Report describes the accomplishments of the US Department of Energy (DOE) cooperative agreement project DE-FC26-04NT42113 - Truck Thermoacoustic Generator and Chiller - whose goal is to design, fabricate and test a thermoacoustic piezoelectric generator and chiller system for use on over-the-road heavy-duty-diesel trucks, driven alternatively by the waste heat of the main diesel engine exhaust or by a burner integrated into the thermoacoustic system. The thermoacoustic system would utilize engine exhaust waste heat to generate electricity and cab air conditioning, and would also function as an auxiliary power unit (APU) for idle reduction. The unit was to be tested in Volvo engine performance and endurance test cells and then integrated onto a Class 8 over-the-road heavy-duty-diesel truck for further testing on the road. The project has been a collaboration of The Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Clean Power Resources Inc., and Volvo Powertrain (Mack Trucks Inc.). Cost share funding was provided by Applied Research Laboratory, and by Clean Power Resources Inc via its grant from Innovation Works - funding that was derived from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Los Alamos received its funding separately through DOE Field Work Proposal 04EE09.

In this project we have sought to explain the co-existence of gas and hydrate phases in sediments within the gas hydrate stability zone. We have focused on the gas/brine interface at the scale of individual grains in the sediment. The capillary forces associated with a gas/brine interface play a dominant role in many processes that occur in the pores of sediments and sedimentary rocks. The mechanical forces associated with the same interface can lead to fracture initiation and propagation in hydrate-bearing sediments. Thus the unifying theme of the research reported here is that pore scale phenomena are key to understanding large scale phenomena in hydrate-bearing sediments whenever a free gas phase is present. Our analysis of pore-scale phenomena in this project has delineated three regimes that govern processes in which the gas phase pressure is increasing: fracturing, capillary fingering and viscous fingering. These regimes are characterized by different morphology of the region invaded by the gas. On the other hand when the gas phase pressure is decreasing, the corresponding regimes are capillary fingering and compaction. In this project, we studied all these regimes except compaction. Many processes of interest in hydrate-bearing sediments can be better understood when placed in the …