Nicolas Bompard

PhD entitled: Shallow mantle peridotite carbonation: feedback between fluid flow and alteration

Hi, I'm Nicolas Bompard and I studied within Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute at the University of Southampton.

I am a first year PhD student at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton working under the supervision of Dr Juerg M Matter (Ocean & Earth Science), Prof Damon Teagle (Ocean & Earth Science) and Dr Nick Woodman (Engineering and the Environment). I graduated with a Licence in Biology from the University Paris 7 - Paris Diderot and in 2012 obtained an MSc in Geochemistry at the Institute de Physique du Globe de Paris, France. For my two MSc internships I worked on iron speciation in Archaean rocks and on iodine storage in borosilicate glasses.

For my PhD research, I focus on geologic carbon capture and storage as a means of mitigating the impact of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions on global climate change and ocean acidification.  I am particularly interested to further develop carbon storage through mineral carbonation in oceanic crust and upper mantle rocks - a process that transforms carbon dioxide into solid carbonate minerals in situ in subsurface reservoirs.  This process occurs naturally through weathering and hydrothermal alteration but the rate of carbonation has to be enhanced by several orders of magnitude to provide a significant contribution to CO ₂ emission reduction.  To successfully engineer this process, we have to advance our understanding of the feedback mechanisms between mineral carbonation processes and subsurface fluid flow in these type of rocks.

My project combines field studies in boreholds in the mantle peridotite of the Samail Ophiolite in the Sultanate of Oman, laboratory experiments on mineral dissolution and carbonation kinetics, and reaction path and reactive transport simulations.  I will use geochemical as well as (geo) physical methods to study the relevant CO ₂ -fluid-rock reactions.