Allan Leal Research Interests

Dr. Allan Leal

Senior Research Assistant


Mailing Address
Dr. Allan Leal
Geothermal Energy & Geofluids
Institute of Geophysics
NO F 57
Sonneggstrasse 5
CH-8092 Zurich Switzerland

Contact
Phone +41 44 633 2521
Email allan.leal(at)eaps.ethz.ch

Administration
Katerina Good
Phone +41 44 632 3465
Email kagood(at)ethz.ch

Research Interests

I am interested in the development and implementation of efficient, accurate and robust computational methods for modeling chemically reactive systems. I am particularly interested in developing methods for multiphase chemical equilibrium and chemical kinetics calculations, as well as their use in the simulation of reactive fluid flow in porous media, where geochemical reactions between fluid species and rock minerals are considered to account for the effects of porosity and permeability changes as a result of mineral dissolution and precipitation. Applications of such methods include modeling of geothermal systems and carbon storage in deep saline aquifers.

My research heavily relies in numerical optimization (e.g., solving chemical equilibrium requires the minimization of Gibbs energy of the chemical system), finite element methods (e.g., solving fluid flow and reactive transport in porous media requires the solution of a system of partial differential/algebraic equations), and advanced programming techniques using C++ and Python (e.g., template metaprogramming, functional and object-oriented programming, and the use of GPUs for high performance computing).