Domaines
Statistical physics
Soft matter
Physics of liquids
Type of internship
Expérimental et théorique Description
Our research project aims to understand the thermodynamic and structural properties of the
supercritical CO 2 (scCO2 ) in a complex environment. scCO2 is indeed a common fluid in different
technologies, in particular for the development towards more environmentally friendly industrial
processes. For example, industrial CO 2 emission could be captured directly at the industrial sites and
stored in geological reservoirs. To assess the validity of this strategy, we need to elucidate the
structure and the thermodynamics of the scCO 2 within these multiscale reservoirs. In our group, we
are developing new theoretical and simulation tools to study the properties of scCO 2 in such a
complex environment. On the fundamental side, the recent developments in the classical density functional theory
(cDFT) allows its extension to molecular and supercritical fluids, such as scCO 2 . cDFT is a
powerful statistical field theory based on the molecular density, which gives (theoretically) the same
results as molecular dynamics simulations, but at a cost at least 10,000 times smaller. We propose
here to implement this strategy to evaluate the properties of scCO2 in confinement with different size,
shape and interfacial properties. The results will be compared with molecular dynamics simulations,
to assess the success of the cDFT.
Contact
Antoine Carof