The University of Queensland (UQ) through the School of Chemical Engineering has been awarded a total of $521,385 by The Australian Research Council (ARC) for research in coal seam gas projects.
The grants are given under the Australian Government's continuous Linkage Projects scheme, which promotes national, and international, collaboration and research partnerships between key stakeholders in government, industry and research institutions. The two awarded projects are:
- 'Selective wellbore coatings to control fines damage in coal seam gas wells', which aims to develop a completely new approach to control solids production in coal seam gas wellbores using a selective phase-inversion polymer coating (grant: $239,727).
- 'Advanced environmental technologies for increasing coal seam permeability', which aims to understand the physical/chemical mechanisms occurring when benign chemicals interact and dissolve minerals and coal surfaces in the natural fractures during the extraction of coal seam gas (grant: $281,658).
Both ARC Linkage projects are supported by Santos, QGC/Shell, Arrow Energy and APLNG through UQ's Centre for Coal Seam Gas.
Overall, in the new continuous rounds, the UQ Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology (EAIT) has secured 11 projects (9 of which are administered by the School of Chemical Engineering) and about 50% of the total ARC funding awarded to UQ for the scheme.
