Results for ENERGY

A weekend field trip featuring renewable and nonrenewable energy installations in Northern California. Tour geothermal, bioenergy, and natural gas field sites with expert guides from the Department of Energy Resources Engineering. Requirements: One campus meeting and weekend field trip. Enrollment limited to 25. Freshman have first choice.

Do you want a much better understanding of renewable power technologies? Did you know that wind and solar are the fastest growing forms of electricity generation? Are you interested in hearing about the most recent, and future, designs for green power? Do you want to understand what limits power extraction from renewable resources and how current designs could be improved? This course dives deep into these and related issues for wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, tidal and wave power technologies. We welcome all student, from non-majors to MBAs and grad students. If you are potentially interested in an energy or environmental related major, this course is particularly useful. Recommended: Math 21 or 42.

This course explores the transition to a sustainable energy system at large scales (national and global), and over long time periods (decades). Explores the drivers of global energy demand and the fundamentals of technologies that can meet this demand sustainably. Focuses on constraints affecting large-scale deployment of technologies, as well as inertial factors affecting this transition. Problems will involve modeling global energy demand, deployment rates for sustainable technologies, technological learning and economics of technical change. Recommended: ENERGY 101, 102.

The Deepwater Horizon blowout and spill in April 2010 occurred on one of the most advanced deepwater drilling rigs in the world operated by one of the most experienced companies. In this course we will look at and discuss the technologies and management practices involved in deepwater drilling and discuss how an accident like this happens and what could have been done differently to avoid it. We will focus on the Horizon and also look briefly at other high profile industrial and technological accidents.

On-the-job practical training under the guidance of on-site supervisors. Required report detailing work activities, problems, assignments and key results. Prerequisite: written consent of instructor.

Lectures, problems. Application of solutions of unsteady flow in porous media to transient pressure analysis of oil, gas, water, and geothermal wells. Pressure buildup analysis and drawdown. Design of well tests. Computer-aided interpretation.

Leading field trips, preparing lecture notes, quizzes under supervision of the instructor. May be repeated for credit.

Original and guided research problems with comprehensive report. May be repeated for credit.

May be repeated for credit.

Individual or group capstone project in Energy Resources Engineering. Emphasis is on report preparation. May be repeated for credit.

Solving the global energy challenge will require the creation and successful scale-up of hundreds of new ventures. This project-based course provides a launchpad for the development and creation of transformational energy ventures and innovation models. Interdisciplinary teams will research, analyze, and develop detailed launch plans for high-impact opportunities in the context of the new energy venture development framework offered in this course.

Today 1.2 billion people have no access to electricity; many more don't have power that is reliable. Activities the developed world counts on for economic growth are severely limited where there isn't reliable electricity. Cost reductions in distributed, renewable energy generation and battery storage technologies are creating opportunities to bring affordable power to communities that have never had it. This course will examine what will need to be in place so that electricity can reach everyone by 2030.

Understanding the current and future price of oil requires the synthesis of geologic, engineering, financial, geopolitical, and macroeconomic information. In this seminar, we will build a global supply curve for petroleum by studying the marginal and full-cycle production costs for each of the major resource categories. We will study how reserve classification varies globally, and how global petroleum resources and reserves have changed and are likely to change over time. We will further investigate how the time lag between resource discovery, project sanctioning, and full production will affect future supply. Finally, we will study the elasticity of oil demand and how that demand is likely to change over time as the developing world gets richer and as competition from other energy sources increases.

Lectures, problems. General flow equations, tensor permeabilities, steady state radial flow, skin, and succession of steady states. Injectivity during fill-up of a depleted reservoir, injectivity for liquid-filled reservoirs. Flow potential and gravity forces, coning. Displacements in layered reservoirs. Transient radial flow equation, primary drainage of a cylindrical reservoir, line source solution, pseudo-steady state. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: 221.

Lectures, problems. Theory of multicomponent, multiphase flow in porous media. Miscible displacement: diffusion and dispersion, convection-dispersion equations and its solutions. Method of characteristic calculations of chromatographic transport of multicomponent mixtures. Development of miscibility and interaction of phase behavior with heterogeneity. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: CME 200.

The physics, theories, and methods of evaluating chemical, miscible, and thermal enhanced oil recovery projects. Existing methods and screening techniques, and analytical and simulation based means of evaluating project effectiveness. Dispersion-convection-adsorption equations, coupled heat, and mass balances and phase behavior provide requisite building blocks for evaluation.

State of the art tools and analyses; the technology, rock physical basis, and applications of each measurement. Hands-on computer-based analyses illustrate instructional material. Guest speakers on formation evaluation topics. Prerequisites: 130 or equivalent; basic well logging; and standard practice and application of electric well logs.

Geostatistical theory and practical methodologies for quantifying and simulating spatial and spatio-temporal patterns for the Earth Sciences. Real case development of models of spatial continuity, including variograms, Boolean models and training images. Estimation versus simulation of spatial patterns. Loss functions. Estimation by kriging, co-kriging with secondary data. Dealing with data on various scales. Unconditional and conditional Boolean simulation, sequential simulation for continuous and categorical variables. Multi-variate geostatistical simulation. Probabilistic and pattern-based approaches to multiple-point simulation. Trend, secondary variable, auxiliary variable and probability-type constraints. Quality control techniques on generated models. Workflows for practical geostatistical applications in mining, petroleum, hydrogeology, remote sensing and environmental sciences. prerequisites: Energy 160/260 or basic course in data analysis/statistics

Conceptual models of heat and mass flows within geothermal reservoirs. The fundamentals of fluid/heat flow in porous media; convective/conductive regimes, dispersion of solutes, reactions in porous media, stability of fluid interfaces, liquid and vapor flows. Interpretation of geochemical, geological, and well data to determine reservoir properties/characteristics. Geothermal plants and the integrated geothermal system.

Special Topics in Energy Resources Engineering

The philosophy of the solution of engineering problems. Methods of solution of partial differential equations: Laplace transforms, Fourier transforms, wavelet transforms, Green's functions, and boundary element methods. Prerequisites: CME 204 or MATH 131, and consent of instructor.

Chemical kinetics are an integral part of optimizing recovery of fossil fuels. After reviewing the genesis of various kinds of fossil fuels and the history of their use, the course describes the molecular structure of the various types and how that influences their pyrolysis kinetics. Methods for deriving reliable kinetics are covered, including how to determine which phenomenological models are appropriate. Applications discussed are petroleum formation, oil shale retorting, heavy oil upgrading, and coal liquefaction.

This course focuses on the extraction of energy from wind, waves and tides.nThe emphasis in the course is technical leading to a solid understanding ofnestablished extraction systems and discussion of promising new technologies.nWe will also cover resource planning and production optimization through observations and computer simulations.nThe course includes at least one weekend field trip, and may include experimentsnin wind tunnel and/or flume.nnPrerequisites: CEE176B or EE293B, programming experience, understanding of fluid mechanics, electrical systems, and engineering optimization.

Independent studies under the direction of a faculty member for which academic credit may properly be allowed.

Interdisciplinary exploration of current energy challenges and opportunities, with talks by faculty, visitors, and students. May be repeated for credit.

For TAs in Energy Resources Engineering. Course and lecture design and preparation; lecturing practice in small groups. Classroom teaching practice in an Energy Resources Engineering course for which the participant is the TA (may be in a later quarter). Taught in collaboration with the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Graduate-level work in experimental, computational, or theoretical research. Special research not included in graduate degree program. May be repeated for credit.

Experimental, computational, or theoretical research. Advanced technical report writing. Limited to 6 units total. (Staff)

Graduate-level work in experimental, computational, or theoretical research for Engineer students. Advanced technical report writing. Limited to 15 units total, or 9 units total if 6 units of 361 were previously credited.

Graduate-level work in experimental, computational, or theoretical research for Ph.D. students. Advanced technical report writing.

Graduate-level research work not related to report, thesis, or dissertation. May be repeated for credit.