Small-scale piped water supply: end-user inclusive water research in arsenic affected areas in India and Bangladesh (DELTAP)

DELTAP is s multi-disciplinary research project, where geologists, water treatment scientists and industrial design engineers join forces to develop an integrated approach towards small-scale piped water supply (SPWS) systems in the arsenic-affected Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta. The project has started in 2016 with a field study in Bihar (India) with a focus on water quality mapping with mobile crowd participation. The coming years the research will continue with 3 PhD candidates, both in India and Bangladesh, with the ultimate aim to develop blueprints for end-user inclusive SPWS systems

Barier island coasts and relative sea level rise: Preservation potential, facies architecture and sequence analysis

Civil Engineering and Geoscience

Reservoir Modelling of Lower Cretaceous West Netherland Basin Aquifers for Geothermal Energy Production

No abstract available

Reservoir modelling of heterolithic tidal deposits: Sensitivity analysis of an object-based stochastic model

Object-based stochastic modelling techniques are routinely employed to generate multiple realisations of the spatial distribution of sediment properties in settings where data density is insufficient to construct a unique deterministic facies architecture model. Challenge is to limit the wide range of possible outcomes of the stochastic model. Ideally, this is done by direct validation with the ‘real-world’ sediment distribution. In a reservoir setting this is impossible because of the limited data density in the wide-spaced wells. In this paper this uncertainty is overcome by using size, shape and facies distributions of tidal channel and tidal flat sand bodies in a highly data-constrained lithofacies architecture model as input for the object-based stochastic model. The lithofacies architecture model was constructed from a densely perforated (Cone Penetration Tests and cored boreholes) tidal estuarine succession of the Holocene Holland Tidal Basin in the Netherlands. The sensitivity of the stochastic model to the input parameters was analysed with the use of varying tidal channel width and thickness values and calculating the connected sand volume per well for the different scenarios. The results indicated that for a small well drainage radius the difference in drainable volumes between the narrowest and the widest channel scenarios is large, and that for a large well drainage radius the tidal channel width hardly influenced the drainable volume. The sensitivity analysis highlighted the importance of sand-dominated tidal flats in improving lateral connectivityCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Facies architecture of heterolithic tidal deposits: The Holocene Holland Tidal Basin

The size, shape and spatial position of lithofacies types (or facies architecture) in a tidal estuarine basin are complex and therefore difficult to model. The tidal currents in the basin concentrate sand-sized sediment in a branching pattern of tidal channels and fringing tidal flats. Away from the sandy tidal flats the sediment gradually changes to mud-dominated heterolithic deposits and clay. In this paper the facies analysis of a tidal estuarine basin, the Holocene Holland Tidal Basin (HHTB) is presented based on core data and Cone Penetration Tests (CPT). Four lithofacies associations are recognized: (1) tidal channel sand, (2) sand-dominated heterolithic inter-tidal flat, (3) mud-dominated heterolithic inter-channel, and (4) fresh-water peat. The high data density allowed for the construction of a detailed facies architecture model in which the size, shape and spatial position of the tidal estuarine facies elements were established. The results can be used to improve the reservoir modelling in highly heterogeneous estuarine reservoir settingsCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Avulsion history of a Holocene semi-arid river system - Outcrop analogue for thin-bedded fluvial reservoirs in the Rotliegend feather edge

Sedimentation at the terminus of low-gradient river systems in a semi-arid climate setting is characterized by thin-but laterally extensive amalgamated sand sheets. Analysis of absolute age dating with Optically Stimulated Luminescence measurements of fluvial sands in the Holocene Río Colorado (Altiplano Basin, Bolivia) aimed to (1) analyze the processes that created this sedimentary architecture, and (2) provide an analogue for thin but laterally-extensive sandstone reservoirs in an overall low net-to-gross setting such as the Rotliegend feather edge. The Río Colorado created a network of laterally-amalgamated fluvial sands by successive river-channel switching as the result of avulsion in a time period of only 4000y. The network formed by successive river avulsions with frequencies from 60 to 910y. The total area covered with these deposits approximates 500 km2; maximum thickness of the deposits is 2m. Fluvial sediment accumulated by vertical aggradation of sand in levees, vertical stacking and lateral amalgamation of crevasse splays, and vertical aggradation of channel-floor sand. This resulted in alluvial ridges with a positive relief on the floodplain. Subsequent river positions avoided the positive relief, and juxtaposition of successive river positions resulted in compensational stacking and amalgamation of fluvial sand deposits to a laterally connected extensive sand sheet

Reservoir Modelling of Lower Cretaceous West Netherland Basin Aquifers for Geothermal Energy Production

No abstract available

Reservoir Modelling of Lower Cretaceous West Netherlands Basin Aquifers for Geothermal Energy Production

This project aims to predict Lower Cretaceous reservoir architecture and reservoir properties of the graben blocks in the West Netherlands Basin for low enthalpy district heating geothermal energy. Horst and pop-up structures in the study area were targets of oil and gas production in the last 60 years. For the recent upcoming geothermal energy production the focus lays on the deeper and warmer graben structures in between the oil and gas fields. Reservoir property predictions like thickness and permeability are currently based on interpolations between oil and gas well measurements on horst and pop-up structures. In order to successfully produce from the current 45 geothermal licences in the province of Zuid-Holland, detailed reservoir models and associated uncertainty maps of the Lower Cretaceous sandstones are required. Goals of the project are to model the reservoir architecture in order to simulate production and determine optimal well placement of geothermal doublets and predict possible doublet interference. Reservoir architecture of these sandstones will be studied by re-evaluating the existing lithostratigraphically based well log correlations, in combination with seismic interpretation and core studies. A palinspastic reconstruction is carried out on a cross section to indicate the paleotopography and the complex reservoir architecture