Jacob Long

I grew up just outside of Houston, Texas, in the shadow of the world’s energy capital. Later in life, I spent years living abroad in Mexico City, one of the largest urban centers in the world, and in the Canadian Rockies, exploring some of the most pristine ecosystems on the planet. That upbringing has given me a unique perspective on a statement from a U.N. 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 profoundly 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.