SPE meeting: Laboratory capabilities and the Halloween Mystery Lab Tour
How can laboratory methods used in energy and environmental research help solve a forensic mystery?
The Halloween edition of the SPE meeting at DTU Offshore on Thursday, October 29, will explore this question. Senior Researcher Karen Feilberg will introduce DTU Offshore’s laboratory capabilities and show how analytical methods used in research into energy, environmental processes and the subsurface can also be used in other contexts.
Programme
17:00 to 18:00: Social hour with drinks
18:00 to 18:50: Presentation by Karen Feilberg
19:00 to 19:30: Sandwich dinner
19:30 to 20:30: Halloween Mystery Lab Tour
Presentation: “DTU Offshore Lab capabilities: Uses in Energy research, environmental research and crime forensics”
DTU Offshore’s laboratory facilities provide advanced experimental capabilities that support both fundamental and applied research in energy production. Researchers use them to develop, test and validate methods that enhance the efficiency and sustainability of operations across the oil, gas, wind power and CCS industries. The experiments help industrial partners improve production processes while mitigating environmental impacts, such as harmful discharges to the sea and emissions to the atmosphere.
The laboratories are equipped to simulate and analyse complex interactions between industrial activities, the marine environment and the subsurface. In controlled experiments, researchers examine the degradation and behaviour of pollutants in seawater, the dispersion of subsea emissions, and interactions between sediments, biofilms and other marine components. This work provides insight into the fate and transport of materials such as water additives, drilling fluids and lubricants, and informs assessments and mitigation strategies that support sustainable ocean use.
While designed for offshore energy applications, the laboratories’ experimental capabilities are valuable for a wide range of disciplines. The same analytical and detection techniques used to trace marine contaminants can, for example, be applied in forensic science to uncover underlying environmental phenomena or criminal activity. This range of applications of the analytical equipment will be demonstrated during the presentation and highlighted further on the lab tour.
Halloween Mystery Lab Tour
After the presentation and dinner, participants will tour the three floors of DTU Offshore’s laboratories and see how the analytical capabilities introduced earlier in the evening can be applied to a fictional forensic case.
A young Gremlin, still in its furry Mogwai stage, has been found dead in the basement of DTU, just two days before Halloween. Scientific test results will be used to solve the mystery of where it came from and what killed it. Through a process of observation, deduction and elimination, its cause of death will be determined.