Faculty Highlight
Dr. Hugh Hales
Dr. Hugh B. Hales is the newest member of BYU’s Chemical Engineering Department’s faculty. Dr. Hales joined the Department last Summer as an Adjunct Research Professor. He comes to BYU from Mobil Oil Corporation’s Technical Center in Dallas, Texas. Previous to joining Mobil, Dr. Hales was an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT he specialized in the mathematical aspect of chemical engineering and developed a course in “The Numerical Solution of chemical Engineering Problems” during the days when computers were first having an impact on the profession. At Mobil he continued his work in numerical methods for more than twenty years.
Dr. Hales will continue his mathematical and petroleum industry oriented research at BYU. He has enlisted the financial support of petroleum companies to do research in “reservoir simulation”. Reservoir simulation involves the use of computers to predict the flow of oil, gas, and water in underground petroleum accumulations. Computer programs, called reservoir simulators, are used by engineers to simulate various methods of producing oil fields. Much like flight simulators allow pilots to safely learn to fly aircraft, reservoir simulators allow reservoir engineers to learn how to get the greatest amounts of oil and gas out of the ground without wasting these resources. Engineers can experiment with well locations and design, and with other field development considerations such as the injection of other fluids into their oil reservoirs to replace the oil By making many reservoir simulations, engineers are able to optimize the recovery of resources and the profitability of their businesses.
Reservoir simulators are becoming increasingly popular tools of the petroleum industry. However, simulators are extremely complex and require immense amounts of both computer time and engineer’s time. Because of these complexities, reservoir simulation is generally used only by the largest oil companies. It is the goal of Dr. Hales’ research to make the process of reservoir simulation much faster, more accurate, and easier for engineers to carry out. Five research projects have been outlined which it is hoped will make reservoir simulation feasible at smaller oil companies and much more popular at large companies.
Dr. Hales’ reservoir simulation research is being undertaken at BYU’s Advanced Combustion Engineering Research Center, headed by Professor L. Douglas Smoot. This large, eleven year-old organization has developed considerable knowledge and resources for the mathematical simulation of combustion processes such as furnaces, engines, and turbines. It is anticipated that BYU’s expertise in this closely related field will allow rapid advanced in reservoir simulation technology. However, the new reservoir simulation research work has a new name, the International Reservoir Simulation Research Institute. Industrial support of IRSRI has been sought, and thirteen companies have already become members. Dr. Hales and his students will visit each of these companies during the coming year to describe their research and the train engineers in applying their work.
We are pleased to have Dr. Hales in our department.