Home | People | Research | Projects | Publications | Lab | Join Us | 中文
The Underground Energy and Fluid Mechanics Research Group at Peking University focuses on deciphering complex pore-scale fluid behavior using advanced experimental methods and theoretical tools, and revealing the laws of flow, heat transfer, mass transfer, and reactions in porous media through upscaling, thereby providing theoretical foundations and new engineering concepts for important processes such as oil and gas development, geologic CO2 storage, in-situ utilization of Martian/lunar resources, and subsurface contaminant control. In recent years, related research papers have been published in journals such as PNAS, PRL, GRL, and SPE Journal.
The research group conducts scientific research and teaching activities under the auspices of the College of Mechanics and Engineering Science at Peking University, the Peking University Institute of Energy, and the Beijing Innovation Center for Engineering Science and Advanced Technology. The group currently leads one National Key R&D Program of China Young Scientist Project, one Overseas High-Level Talent Recruitment Program (Young Project) of the Central Organization Department, one General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and several collaborative research projects with CNPC and Sinopec, while also participating in several related research projects. In addition, the group teaches the courses "Physics of Flow in Porous Media" and "Principles of Chemical Engineering" at the College of Mechanics and Engineering Science, Peking University.
Group PI
The group leader, Ke Xu, joined the College of Mechanics and Engineering Science at Peking University in January 2020 as a tenured associate professor and doctoral supervisor. He also serves as Assistant Dean of the College of Mechanics and Engineering Science and Deputy Head of the Department of Energy and Resources Engineering, and holds a joint appointment at the Peking University Institute of Energy.
Prof. Xu received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Tsinghua University, and his doctoral degree in Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin). From 2018 to 2020, he conducted postdoctoral research in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Details of the research projects undertaken by the group can be found on the Projects page; a full list of publications is available here.