About

Peter K. Kang is a geoscientist whose research focuses on the physics of flow and transport in porous and fractured media. He is currently a research scientist at Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and an affiliated researcher in the Subsurface Energy and Mechanics (SEaM) Lab and the Earth Resources Laboratory (ERL) at MIT. Peter’s research focuses on flow and transport in porous and fractured media. He combines theory, numerical simulation and experiments to further advance fundamental understanding of the fluid flow and mass transport across scales: from pore to fracture to field scale. Based on the understanding of the multi-scale phenomena, he develops predictive models for real world problems in areas of subsurface energy and water resources, including subsurface contaminant transport, reservoir characterization, aquifer storage and recovery (managed aquifer recharge), and water filtration.

Impact of DiaMonD

Peter was Postdoctoral Associate with Ruben Juanes at MIT and partially supported by DiaMonD. He investigated the effects of confining stress on fluid flow and tracer transport through fractures. The contact between fluids and the solids in porous media enables a strong fluid-solid coupling in subsurface processes. He found the emergence of anomalous transport through a rough-walled fracture as a result of increasing compressive stress on the fracture, and investigated the origin of the observed anomalous transport. Based on the mechanistic understanding he developed an upscaled transport model and demonstrated its predictive power. This work elucidated an unrecognized link between geomechanics and tracer transport in fractured media. DiaMonD team and DiaMonD’s broad themes were an invaluable opportunity for Peter to expand his research networks across different fields of science. Peter is currently extending his coupled flow-geomechanics work to study the impact of geomechanical effects on flow and tracer transport in fractured media at field scale with Ruben Juanes.