Duncker Romanak, Katherine
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Dr. Katherine Duncker Romanak joined the BEG (Bureau of Economic Geology at UT Austin) in June 2008 as a Research Associate after earning her Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Dr. Phillip Bennett. Her expertise is in the field of geochemistry, isotope systematics, and microbial influences on carbon cycling in aqueous systems and in the vadose zone. Since October 2007, she has worked on the SWP Phase II to identify potential impacts of CO2-enhanced oil recovery on shallow groundwater resources at the SACROC oilfield. She has also performed an initial characterization of soil-gas at the stacked storage injection site at Cranfield Mississippi under SECARB Phase II and is in charge of designing and implementing the surface monitoring study during Phase III of the project. She is currently developing a high pressure-temperature laboratory for experimental investigations of supercritical CO2-brine-rock interactions under the University of Texas Center for Frontiers of Subsurface Energy Security which is a U.S. DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. Dr. Romanak also currently serves on the steering committee for the IEAGHG Leakage Impacts working group.
Education:
PhD, Geology, The University of Texas at Austin (1997)
MS, Geology, University of Texas, Arlington (1988)
BS, Geology, Southern Methodist University (1984)
Selected Publications:
Romanak, K.D., Smyth, R.C., Yang, C, Hovorka, S.D., and Lu, J., 2010, Role of dedolomitization in the detection of anthropogenic CO2 in freshwater aquifers, Proceedings of the 13th International conference on water-rock interaction WRI-13, Guanajuato, Mexico, 16-20 August 2010, p. 887-890.
Romanak, K.D, Yang, Changbing, Hovorka, S.D., 2010, Targeted soil-gas methodologies for monitoring an engineered plugged and abandoned well site, Cranfield Mississippi, The 9th Annual Conference on Carbon Capture & Sequestration, May 10 - 13, 2010, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Romanak, K. D., and Smyth, R. C., 2008, Geochemical effects of CO2-enhanced oil recovery on the shallow Dockum aquifer, west Texas (abs.), in 7th Annual Conference on Carbon Capture & Sequestration, May 5th–8th, 2008, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Yang C., Romanak, K.D. Hovorka, S.D., Linder, J., Smyth, R.C., Trevino, R., Paine, J., Holt, B., Smith, L.T., Xia, Y., and Lu, J., 2010, Geochemical characterization of shallow groundwater at the Cranfield aquifer and numerical simulation: can pH and carbonate parameters be used to detect potential CO2 leakage at geological CO2 sequestration sites? The 9th Annual Conference on Carbon Capture & Sequestration, May 10 - 13, 2010, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Smyth, R. C., Hovorka, S. D., Romanak, K. D., Partin, J. W., Wong, C., Meckel, T. A., Nicot, J. P., and Holt, R. H., 2008, Assessing risk to fresh water resources from long term CO2 injection—laboratory and field studies (abs.), in 9th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Technologies, November 16–20, Washington, D.C.