Tianjia Huang

Tianjia Huang

Postdoctoral Researcher | Subsurface Energy Systems Modeling | High-Performance Scientific Computing

Texas A&M University

Email: huangtj@tamu.edu

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Education

Research Interests

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at Texas A&M University working on subsurface energy systems, reactive transport, and computational geomechanics. My research combines high-fidelity numerical modeling with high-performance scientific computing to study coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanical-chemical processes in geologic media. A central theme of my work is extending the TOUGH family of simulators so that fundamental model development translates into tools that can be used for underground hydrogen storage, carbon storage, geothermal energy, natural gas hydrates, and nuclear waste disposal.

  1. Coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanical processes in subsurface systems
  2. Reactive transport and geochemical interactions in porous and fractured media
  3. Particle transport and solid-fluid interactions in porous media
  4. High-performance scientific computing for energy and environmental applications

Research Impact & Scientific Software Development

  • Parallel TOUGH+RealGasBrine Simulator (Fortran & MPI)
    Lead Developer: Tianjia Huang & George Moridis
    Code Access: Serial code; parallel code will be released soon.
    • Parallelized the TOUGH+RealGasBrine simulator for large-scale modeling of non-isothermal multiphase flow and transport in porous and fractured subsurface systems.
    • Achieved scalable performance for simulations with millions of degrees of freedom using PETSc-based parallel solvers and METIS domain decomposition.
    • Conducted systematic performance benchmarking and scalability analysis on high-performance computing clusters.
    • Applied the simulator to underground hydrogen storage in aquifers and depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs, carbon sequestration in saline formations, and other coupled-process subsurface energy studies.
  • Parallel Particle Transport Module for TOUGH+Hydrate (Fortran & MPI)
    Lead Developer: Tianjia Huang & George Moridis
    Code Access: TOUGH+Hydrate; the standalone particle transport module will be open-sourced on GitHub soon.
    • Implemented particle tracking and coupling with multiphase flow fields to capture particle migration, bridging, and clogging processes.
    • Introduced the first reservoir-scale implementation of particle tracking within the TOUGH+Hydrate framework, enabling simulation of particle migration and clogging during gas production.
  • Multiphase Flash Calculation Algorithms (MATLAB & Python)
    Lead Developer: Tianjia Huang & Russell Johns
    Code Access: Will be released via the research group products page.
    • Developed robust algorithms for solving multiphase Rachford-Rice equations with arbitrary numbers of phases and components.
  • Geothermal Reactive Transport Modeling Framework (Python)
    Lead Developer: Tianjia Huang
    Code Access: Will be released on my GitHub after the paper is accepted.
    • Developed a Python-based framework integrating multiple open-source mesh generation tools to construct three-dimensional matrix-fracture systems for finite-volume reactive transport simulations.
    • Coupled reactive transport models with discrete fracture network representations to analyze mineral precipitation, permeability evolution, and injectivity decline in geothermal reservoirs.
  • Computational Modeling for Subsurface Energy Systems (TOUGH)
    Lead Developer: Tianjia Huang
    Code Access: Please feel free to contact me for collaboration.
    Simulation frameworks developed in this research support modeling of:
    • Underground hydrogen storage and geological hydrogen
    • Geothermal reservoir evolution
    • Carbon sequestration in saline aquifers
    • Nuclear waste repository performance
    • Natural gas hydrate production
    • Multiphysics geomechanical response in complex geologic media

Work Experience