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Suekane Lab
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A lab that visualizes water, oil, and CO2 flowing through the pores of rock.
AboutAbout the lab
Seeing flow inside rock with X-ray CT.
The Suekane Lab studies multiphase flow inside porous media such as rock.
It works on interdisciplinary themes related to energy and the environment, including underground storage of carbon dioxide, a technology for mitigating global warming, and technologies for recovering crude oil efficiently.
Using X-ray CT, the lab visualizes the inside of rock, which cannot be seen with light, down to the pore scale, and combines this with numerical analysis such as the lattice Boltzmann method.
Students who understand fundamentals such as conservation of energy and continuity of fluids can get started easily, and students from many different fields can apply their own expertise in their research.
Key terms
- Porous medium
- A material, such as rock or sand, that has many small gaps (pores) inside it.
- Multiphase flow
- Flow in which substances with different properties, such as water and oil or a gas and a liquid, flow while mixed together.
- X-ray CT
- A device that shines X-rays on an object, takes cross-sectional images of its inside, and examines it in three dimensions.
NewsLab news
Held an online lab tour mainly for students from outside the university
Held an online lab tour for students both within and outside the university
Held an online lab tour mainly for students from outside the university
Held an online lab tour for students both within and outside the university
Held an online lab tour for students from outside the university
ResearchResearch themes
The lab studies multiphase flow inside rock, including carbon dioxide underground storage technology and technology for highly efficient crude oil recovery. It combines pore-scale visualization measurement using X-ray CT with numerical analysis such as the lattice Boltzmann method, and carries out this work jointly with universities and research institutes in Japan and abroad.
*Illustrative imageRecovering more crude oil
To recover more of the crude oil left underground, the lab uses X-ray CT to visualize the three-phase flow of water, gas, and oil through porous media that mimic reservoirs, and works to clarify the mechanisms behind it.
*Illustrative imageTrapping CO2 underground
This is a technology for trapping CO2 from sources such as power plants in deep geological formations. Using X-ray CT, the lab observes the movement of CO2 in the formation in three dimensions and investigates how it remains trapped in pores and how it dissolves into groundwater.
*Illustrative imageAnalysis with the lattice Boltzmann method
For reservoir simulations used to predict underground CO2 storage and oil recovery, the lab is developing a way to obtain the necessary parameters quickly and at low cost through numerical computation with the lattice Boltzmann method.
*Illustrative imageSeeing shale gas flow at the molecular level
This research uses molecular dynamics calculations to clarify how methane molecules, the main component of shale gas, flow underground.
MembersFaculty
The Suekane Lab consists of faculty members and doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students.As of 2026
- ProfessorTetsuya SuekanePublications ↗
- Assistant ProfessorShintaro MatsushitaPublications ↗
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Thin section of sandstone core as viewed through one of the USGS Core Research Center's microscopes” Joshuahicks (talk) / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Recovering more crude oil: “Oil Well Pump Jack ( )” Chad Davis from Minneapolis, United States / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Trapping CO2 underground: “Aquistore wellhead” Implicit Matrix / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Analysis with the lattice Boltzmann method: “Illustration of effect of Stokes number on particle in flowing air” Richard Sear / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Seeing shale gas flow at the molecular level: “Methane-CRC-MW-3D-balls” Ben Mills / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (河本研究室): “Debris-GEO1280” NASA image / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (佐藤・関口研究室): “Gecko foot on glass” Bjørn Christian Tørrissen / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (八木研究室): “Axons Al Dente” MikeRoscopy / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (古川研究室
（再生医工学研究室） ): “Line of culture flask ( )” Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier from USA / CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
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