About:
Russell T. Johns is the George E. Trimble Chair of Energy and Mineral Sciences at the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State. He recently served as Chair of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering Program from 2015 to 2018, Distinguished SPE Lecturer for 2019–2020, and Editor-In-Chief for SPE technical journals from 2018–2020.
Prior to his current position, he served on the petroleum engineering faculty at The University of Texas at Austin from 1995 to 2010. He also has nine years of industrial experience as a petrophysical engineer with Shell Oil and as a hydrogeologist for Colenco Power Consulting in Baden, Switzerland. He holds a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in petroleum engineering and water resources from Stanford University. He has over 250 publications in enhanced oil recovery, thermodynamics, and phase behavior, unconventional gas engineering, multiphase flow in porous media, and well testing. Johns received the SPE Ferguson medal in 1993, the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Distinguished Member award in 2009, the SPE Faculty Pipeline award in 2013, the 2016 SPE international award in Reservoir Description and Dynamics, the Wilson Excellence in Research award from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences in 2018, and the prestigious IOR Pioneer Award from SPE in 2022. He is currently director of the Enhanced Oil Recovery consortium in the EMS Energy Institute at Penn State.
- Predictive equation-of-state (EOS) for microemulsion phase behavior to aid petroleum and chemical companies in improved project design.
- Transformation of petrophysical models to physics-based models, specifically related to rock-fluid interactions and use in enhanced oil recovery.
- New generation compositional simulation that is more robust, accurate, and computational efficient.
- Analytical calculation of minimum miscibility pressure for gas injection processes.
Recent Publications
- Magzymov, Daulet, Johns, Russell T., Hashim, Hafsa, and Birol Dindoruk. "Modeling of High-Pressure and High-Temperature Microemulsion Experiments using HLD-NAC-Based Equation of State." SPE J. (2022;): doi: https://doi.org/10.2118/209470-PA’
- Magzymov, D., Ratnakar, R. R., Dindoruk, B., & Johns, R. T. (2022). Evaluation of machine learning methodologies using simple physics based conceptual models for flow in porous media. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, 219, [111056]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2022.111056
- Tawfik, M. S., Karpyn, Z. T., & Johns, R. T. (2022). Effect of oil chemistry on the performance of low-salinity waterflooding in carbonates: An integrated experimental approach. Fuel, 329, [125436]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2022.125436
- Mukherjee, S., & Johns, R. T. (2022). Sensitivity Analysis of Fluid–Fluid Interfacial Area, Phase Saturation and Phase Connectivity on Relative Permeability Estimation Using Machine Learning Algorithms. Energies, 15(16), [5893]. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15165893
- Magzymov, D., & Johns, R. T. (2022). Inclusion of variable characteristic length in microemulsion flash calculations. Computational Geosciences, 26(4), 995-1010. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10596-022-10158-2
- Magzymov, D., Purswani, P., Karpyn, Z. T., & Johns, R. T. (2022). Modeling the Effect of Reaction Kinetics and Dispersion during Low-Salinity Waterflooding. SPE Journal, 26(5), 3075-3093. https://doi.org/10.2118/193909-PA
- Tawfik, M. S., Adishesha, A. S., Hsi, Y., Purswani, P., Johns, R. T., Shokouhi, P., Huang, X., & Karpyn, Z. T. (2022). Comparative Study of Traditional and Deep-Learning Denoising Approaches for Image-Based Petrophysical Characterization of Porous Media. Frontiers in Water, 3, [800369]. https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2021.800369
- Duffy, T. S., Gamwo, I. K., Johns, R. T., & Lvov, S. N. (2021). Modeling Contact Angle vs. Temperature for the Quartz-Water-Decane System. SPE Journal, 26(6), 3668-3680. https://doi.org/10.2118/205518-PA
- Dindoruk, B., Johns, R., & Orr, F. M. (2021). Measurement and modeling of minimum miscibility pressure: A state-of-the-art review. SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering, 24(2), 367-389. https://doi.org/10.2118/200462-PA
- Magzymov, D., Clemens, T., Schumi, B., & Johns, R. T. (2021). Experimental analysis of alkali-brine-alcohol phase behavior with high acid number crude oil. SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering, 24(2), 390-408. https://doi.org/10.2118/201369-PA
- Duffy, T. S., Li, J., Johns, R. T., & Lvov, S. N. (2021). Capillary contact angle for the quartz-distilled water-normal decane interface at temperatures up to 200 °C. Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects, 609, [125608]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colsurfa.2020.125608
- Khorsandi, S., Li, L, and Johns, R.T., A New Way of Compositional Simulation Without Phase Labeling, SPE J., 26 (02), pp. 940-958. 2021.
- Purswani, P., Johns, R. T., Karpyn, Z. T., & Blunt, M.. Predictive Modeling of Relative Permeability Using a Generalized Equation of State. SPE Journal, https://doi.org/10.2118/200410-PA, 26(01), pp. 191-205, 2021.
- Cronin, M., Emami-Meybodi, H., & Johns, R. T. Multicomponent Diffusion Modeling of Cyclic Solvent Injection in Ultra-Tight Reservoirs. SPEJ 26 (03), pp. 1213-1232, doi:10.2118/196008-PA. 2021.