Jacob Long

According to a recent United Nations report, “Climate Change is the defining issue of our time, and we are at a defining moment.” Over the years, I’ve seen the causes of climate change and I’ve seen the consequences – both have made me determined to use my education, time, and talents finding solutions to our climate crisis. At Stanford University, I am building on these experiences and my educational foundation in geoscience by pursing a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences focused on carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS). CCUS has the potential to dramatically abate CO₂ emissions across the globe, especially if the scientific community, along with industry and government partners, are able to enhance and scale up needed technologies in the coming years.

My research specifically focuses on the long-term storage of CO₂ in subsurface reservoirs through conversion into stable carbonate minerals. If a reservoir with an ideal chemical composition is used, such as basalt (which is rich in divalent metals such as calcium, magnesium, and iron), the CO₂ will react with the reservoir brine and lithology to produce carbonate minerals. I am investigating enhancing this process so that large amounts of CO₂ can be stored relatively quickly with a high degree of security. My laboratory-based experiments leverage a combination of aqueous geochemistry and rock physics to understand how processes such as basalt dissolution, mass transport, and carbonate precipitation are affected by reservoir mineralogy, fluid evolution, porosity, and permeability.