Can large language models replace human participants in some future market research?

New research says “yes”

INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

INFORMS Journal Marketing Science New Study Key Takeaways:

• Large language models (LLMs) achieve a 75%-85% agreement rate with human data sets.
• LLMs will be used to accelerate market research programs while reducing costs and preserving accuracy.

 

BALTIMORE, MD, April 09, 2024 – Do market researchers still need to conduct original research using human participants in their work? Not always, according to a new study, which found that thanks to the increasing sophistication of large language models (LLMs), human participants can be substituted with LLMs and still generate similar outputs as those generated from human surveys.

The study is published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science. The peer-reviewed article, “Determining the Validity of Large Language Models for Automated Perceptual Analysis,” is authored by Peiyao Li and Zsolt Katona, both of the University of California, Berkeley; Noah Castelo of the University of Alberta; and Miklos Sarvary of Columbia University.

According to the research, agreement rates between human- and LLM-generated data sets reached 75%-85%.

“LLMs can be used to generate text when given a prompt on certain generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms,” says Li. “Our research focused on perceptual analysis and the use of automated market research for certain product categories.”

To conduct their research, the study authors used LLMs to tap data that is broadly available on the internet. They developed a new methodology and workflow that allow market researchers to rely only on an LLM to conduct market research. As a result, they demonstrated that LLM-powered market research can produce meaningful results and even replicate human results.

“It is important to note that with LLMs, while market researchers may not require interviews with human research subjects, the ultimate data does originate from human beings, using available data,” says Katona. “LLMs have been engineered to accurately replicate human responses based on machine learning of actual human perceptions, attitudes and preferences.”

Castelo added, “The core LLM takes a prompt as an input and generates a continuation of text as output. With proper prompting, the LLM can then generate comparisons and assessments of various brands or products in a given category and produce results that are, at the moment, 75%-85% in agreement with research featuring human participants.”

The researchers believe that for some product and brand categories, their new method of fully or partially automating market research will increase the efficiency of market research by speeding up the process, and potentially reducing cost. At the same time, they caution that fully automated market research without human input may not be accurate for all product categories.

“While we are very excited about the possibilities we’ve seen through our research, we recognize that this is just the beginning and going forward, LLM-based market research will be able to answer more nuanced questions as the market research field begins to tap and develop its potential,” says Sarvary.

 

 Link to Study.

 

About INFORMS and Marketing Science

Marketing Science is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly marketing journal focused on research using quantitative approaches to study all aspects of the interface between consumers and firms. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals. More information is available at www.informs.org or @informs.

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JOURNAL

Marketing Science

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

“Determining the Validity of Large Language Models for Automated Perceptual Analysis”

 

Republicans who support childhood vaccine mandates often stay silent

Study suggests social media is key contributor to self-censorship

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Most Republican voters support childhood vaccine mandates, yet may be discouraged from publicly expressing these views, a new study suggests.  

To determine the source of this disconnect, researchers conducted a survey that revealed differences between Republican voters who support childhood vaccine mandates and those who do not.

According to the study, most Republicans surveyed supported immunization requirements for children and held favorable attitudes toward vaccine safety, while those who said they opposed vaccine mandates did not acknowledge this support exists – and expressed a greater willingness to share their vaccine views to others. 

In contrast, the Republicans who supported vaccine mandates were largely aware that their views were in the majority, but tended to be less outspoken.

This phenomenon, called the false consensus effect, describes a misperception by people about how widespread their views are and a belief that their opinions are shared by others – when they are not. 

These results suggest that conservative supporters of childhood vaccination are not discouraged from speaking out because they assume that they are in the minority, but because external information environments, like social media, are sometimes dominated by minority views, said Graham Dixon, lead author of the study and an associate professor of communication at The Ohio State University.   

“Those in the majority may simply sit out of the conversation because they see online environments as being dominated by extreme views and don’t want to engage in uncivil discourse,” said Dixon. “What’s significant is that those in the majority may self-silence even when they are aware of their majority status.”

The study was recently published in the journal Human Communication Research.

The work is especially notable because it corroborates recent research showing that much of social media content is driven by a minority of users who express more opinionated and politicized views than the typical user, said Dixon. 

“Social media has become the new public square, so it’s concerning that the overrepresentation of atypical and sometimes extreme views may discourage people from participating in the conversation,” he said. 

This overrepresentation, notes the study, can discourage those in the majority from speaking out because they fear that they may experience social conflict from doing so. 

For example, when participants who supported immunization requirements were frequently exposed to anti-vaccine content on social media, they were more likely to believe that they would encounter conflict if they publicly voiced their support for vaccines. 

This is likely a larger consequence of the online social environment, as social media can be used to amplify misleading information that represents the views of only a small subset of the population, said Dixon. In this case, such large-scale self-censorship could play a role in hindering public mobilization of important public health policies.

Researchers also found that the study’s results reveal more about majority misconceptions about a number of other issues, including how much support there is for climate change mitigation policies. For society to combat these issues, Dixon suggests that helping individuals build more self-confidence when engaging in online discourse and encouraging them to gain greater media literacy to navigate society’s fluctuating information environment could be better tools for overcoming self-silencing.

“We need to figure out ways of motivating people to engage in online discourse and to have the self-confidence necessary to be able to present their views,” he said. “Instead of telling them that their views are in the majority, efforts should be made to empower people’s self-confidence to participate in online discourse in civil and constructive ways.” 

Other Ohio State co-authors include Blue Lerner and Samuel Bashian. 

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JOURNAL

Human Communication Research

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Challenges to correcting pluralistic ignorance: false consensus effects, competing information environments, and anticipated social conflict

 

New mobile telescope installed at Georgia State’s CHARA Array

The moveable equipment will allow scientists to view large and small stars in more detail than ever. New observations are expected to begin before the end of the year

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

GEORGIA STATE UNIERSITY'S CHARA ARRAY OFFERS THE BEST RESOLUTION OF ANY TELESCOPE AT VISIBLE AND NEAR-INFRARED WAVELENGTHS.

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CREDIT: GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

ATLANTA — Scientists from around the world will have new opportunities to study the stars thanks to a newly installed mobile telescope at Georgia State’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy, known as the CHARA Array.

The new — and seventh — telescope is mounted on a trailer that can be moved between locations near the other telescopes with fixed locations.

Douglas Gies, director of the CHARA Array and Regents’ Professor of Physics and Astronomy, said the new addition will allow astronomers to obtain better images of stars both large and small.

“The astronomers who come to the CHARA Array always ask about extending its abilities in new ways for scientific investigations,” Gies said. “There are several dozen red supergiant stars that are actually too large for CHARA to measure, and there are thousands of distant stars of great interest that are too small to see.

“The new telescope will help us to see these remarkable stars by moving between a location close to existing telescopes for images of big stars, and a far southern location for measurements of small stars. The new largest baseline, or telescope separation, will increase from 330 meters to 550 meters at the southern site. Thus, the CHARA Array is now beating its own world’s largest record through this expansion.”

The CHARA Array is positioned atop Mount Wilson in California, and acts as a single, massive telescope. This means that even with extremely tiny angular dimensions, astronomers can measure the sizes of individual stars and the separations of stars in pairs.

The new telescope will work with the existing CHARA telescopes by relaying star light through fiber optic cables.  The CHARA Array staff are working with scientists at the University of Limoges in France in the design and control of the fiber optics.

The CHARA Array is one of the most potent instruments in the world for studying stars and stellar systems at resolutions never before possible, since it offers the best resolution of any telescope at visible and near-infrared wavelengths.

Part of future expansion of the array includes a plan to connect other new telescopes using fiber optics to transport the starlight to the central beam-combining laboratory. The project with the new mobile telescope is named the CHARA Michelson Array Pathfinder (CMAP), as it is establishing how fiber optics will enable a much larger interferometric array in the future.

“The CHARA Array is making exciting strides to the benefit of scientists conducting important research from around the world,” said Donald Hamelberg, interim vice president for Research and Economic Development at Georgia State. “We’re excited to see this expansion to this one-of-a-kind research center that inspires knowledge about our world and the cosmos.”

Gies said the project is being led by CHARA staff member Robert Ligon, who is an expert in optics and interferometry, with a team that has designed and led every aspect of the new telescope and its equipment.

“There are many new discoveries on the horizon that will be made with the newly enlarged CHARA Array, and observations should begin before the end of the year,” Gies said.

Scientists from around the world have the opportunity to use the facilities at the CHARA Array to conduct astronomy and physics research through an application system.

The CHARA Array is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and Georgia State University through the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development. For more information about Georgia State University research and its impact, visit research.gsu.edu.

The new mobile telescope being installed at Georgia State’s CHARA Array on Mount Wilson, Calif.

CREDIT

Georgia State University

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This image of the Whirlpool Galaxy (31 million light years distant) was made on the night of the installation, March 23, 2024.

CREDIT

Courtesy: Georgia State University's CHARA Array

 

Engineering students solve soldiers’ problem at lightning speed

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

It started as a class project for University of Florida senior engineering students, and it became a viable solution for soldiers who needed an easier, faster, and safer way to camouflage their vehicles on the battlefield. 

Students from Matthew J. Traum’s mechanical engineering capstone course received real-world training last year when they partnered with peers at Georgia Institute of Technology and the Civil-Military Innovation Institute, or CMI2, to design and produce a vehicle camouflage deployer for the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia. 

“This was a successful collaboration that tackled a problem faced by soldiers in the field — and much more rapidly than the Army’s conventional process,” said Traum, Ph.D., an instructional associate professor in the UF Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. 

Traum said a prototype of the UF-designed vehicle camouflage deployment device was delivered to Fort Stewart at the end of the fall 2023 semester and replicated in-house by the Army. The device is currently being field tested.

“Our students designed and built the device in one calendar year, which is remarkable speed compared to conventional Army innovation timelines, which can take years,” Traum said. “The system surpassed the Army’s stated targets for mounting, deploying, and retracting the camouflage while keeping the soldiers safer.” 

Traum learned through a colleague, Randy Emert at CMI2, about the potential for collaboration with the nonprofit organization through the Army’s Pathfinder program, managed by the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Army Research Laboratory and supported by CMI2 to bridge the gaps in defense innovation by fostering relationships between service members and researchers. Traum was invited to the Army base to listen as soldiers presented their wish lists of projects. 

“The Army’s tactical innovation labs play a key role in addressing in-field challenges faced by frontline soldiers and securing the necessary resources and technologies to resolve them,” said Emert, the CMI2 lab manager for the Marne Innovation Center at Fort Stewart. “We source problems directly from service members and engage engineering students in a short cycle of product development.” 

Based on what Traum heard that day, the need to camouflage combat vehicles faster was a good fit for his capstone students. 

“Every time we park a combat vehicle on a battlefield, we need to cover it with camouflage material to hide it from the enemy,” said Capt. Chris Aliperti, co-founder of the Marne Innovation Center. “The process is not easy, and the soldiers were asking for something that would save them time and keep them safe.” 

The camouflage deployment problem was broad enough for senior engineering students to work on, and one that could potentially be designed and built within a year, said Aliperti, who recently was promoted and is now a mechanical engineering instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. 

“This was something soldiers on the frontline were asking for, and our team didn’t have the bandwidth to address it,” Aliperti said. “The collaboration with the University of Florida provided invaluable hands-on experience to their students, and the end result contributes directly to enhancing the capabilities of our service members.” 

The capstone course is a UF mechanical engineering student’s last class before they graduate and is viewed as a culmination of what students have learned throughout the curriculum, Traum said. The Army project spanned three semesters with about 80 students enrolled each semester. 

Their approach evolved over the course of the year, and soldiers offered the students ideas and input weekly. 

“It was interesting to see how the design started out as something most people would come up with, but after students met with the soldiers, took their feedback and ran analyses, they ended up with something that looked very different,” Aliperti said. “And it solves the problem much better than the original design.”

The students' innovation addresses a longstanding pain point for soldiers. Traditionally, the poles used to hold up the camouflage material are staked into the ground, posing difficulties in muddy terrain or on urban concrete where securing them is impractical. Recognizing this limitation, the students devised a solution that uses mounting plates that are secured into place by the weight of the vehicle.

"That novel feature excited the Army,” Traum said. “By eliminating dependence on ground conditions, the mounting plates offer a versatile solution.” 

The new device also masks the type of vehicle hidden beneath the camouflage netting. By strategically deploying poles to disrupt the shape of the netting, the device ensures that the vehicle’s silhouette varies each time it is deployed, thwarting the enemy’s ability to identify the concealed asset. 

“The students were smart enough to realize in order to make a new device feasible, they should build around the equipment already in use,” Aliperti said. “Their device allows us to use the same poles and the same net but much more efficiently.” 

Success of projects like the vehicle camouflage deployment device that was borne out of the Army’s tactical innovation lab set a precedent for future endeavors between academia and the military. 

“Bringing ideas of this scope and scale to students to chew on allows young engineers to apply the fundamental lessons they learn in a book to real-life problems,” Aliperti said. “And if we strike gold on a great design like this one from the University of Florida, we’ve made a monumental impact across the entire Army.” 

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Do some mysterious bones belong to gigantic ichthyosaurs?

A study carried out at the University of Bonn sheds light on a mystery that has puzzled paleontologists for 150 years

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BONN

 

IMAGE: 

REMAINS OF ICHTHYOSAURS HAVE BEEN FOUND IN OCEAN SEDIMENT IN VARIOUS PLACES AROUND EUROPE. 

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CREDIT: © MARCELLO PERILLO / UNIVERSITY OF BONN

Several similar large, fossilized bone fragments have been discovered in various regions across Western and Central Europe since the 19th century. The animal group to which they belonged is still the subject of much debate to this day. A study carried out at the University of Bonn could now settle this dispute once and for all: The microstructure of the fossils indicates that they come from the lower jaw of a gigantic ichthyosaur. These animals could reach 25 to 30 meters in length, a similar size to the modern blue whale. The results have now been published in the journal PeerJ.

In 1850, the British naturalist Samuel Stutchbury reported a mysterious find in a scientific journal: A large, cylindrical bone fragment had been discovered at Aust Cliff – a fossil deposit near to Bristol. Similar bone fragments have since been found in various different places around Europe, including Bonenburg in North Rhine-Westphalia and in the Provence region of France. More than 200 million years ago, these areas were submerged beneath a huge ocean that covered vast swathes of Western and Central Europe. Fossil remains from the animal world of that time – including marine and coastal dwellers – have been preserved in the sediment.

There is still some debate to this day about the animal group to which these large, fossilized bones belonged. Stutchbury assumed in his examination of the first finds that they came from a labyrinthodontia, an extinct crocodile-like land creature. However, this hypothesis was questioned by other researchers, who believed instead that the fossils came from long-necked dinosaurs (sauropods), stegosaurs or a still completely unknown group of dinosaurs.

Unusual tissue made of protein fibers

“Already by the beginning of the 20th century, some other researchers had theorized that the fossils could possibly be from a gigantic ichthyosaur,” explains Marcello Perillo. The young researcher has been investigating this theory as part of his Master’s Thesis in the research group headed by Prof. Martin Sander in the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Bonn. As part of his work, he examined the microstructure of the fossilized bone tissue. “Bones of similar species generally have a similar structure,” he says. “Osteohistology – the analysis of bone tissue – can thus be used to draw conclusions about the animal group from which the find originates.”

Perillo first took samples from the bones that have so far not been classified. “I compared specimens from South West England, France and Bonenburg,” he says. “They all displayed a very specific combination of properties. This discovery indicated that they might come from the same animal group.” He then used a special microscope to prove that the bone wall had a very unusual structure: It contained long strands of mineralized collagen, a protein fiber, which were interwoven in a characteristic way that had not yet been found in other bones.

Ichthyosaur bones with a similar structure

Interestingly, fossils from large ichthyosaurs from Canada also have a very similar bone wall structure. “However, this structure is not found in fossil samples from other animal groups that I have studied,” emphasized Perillo. “Therefore, it seems highly probable that the fragments in question also belong to an ichthyosaur and that the findings refute the claim that the bones come from a land-living dinosaur.”

It is likely that the fossils come from the lower jaw of a sea creature. By comparing the size of the fragments with the jaws of other species in this animal group, it is possible to deduce the length of the animals: They could possibly have reached a length of 25 to 30 meters, as proponents of the ichthyosaur theory had originally speculated in an earlier study. “However, this number is only an estimate and far from certain – until, that is, we find more complete fossil remains,” says Perillo. Nevertheless, they were certainly exceptionally large.

The first ichthyosaur lived in the ancient oceans in the early Triassic period around 250 million years ago. Species as big as whales existed early on but the largest creatures only appeared around 215 million years ago. Almost all species of ichthyosaur then died out at the end of the Triassic period more than 200 million years ago.

The unusual structure of their bone walls – which is similar to carbon fiber reinforced materials – probably kept the bone very stable while allowing for fast growth. “These huge jaws would have been exposed to strong shearing forces even when the animal was eating normally,” says Perillo. “It is possible that these animals also used their snouts to ram into their prey, similar to the orcas of today. However, this is still pure speculation at this time.”

Funding:
Marcello Perillo was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The excavations carried out in Bonenburg by the Institute of Geosciences were funded by the NRW Office for the Preservation of Archaeological Heritage via the LWL Museum of Natural History.

Publication: Marcello Perillo, P Martin Sander: The dinosaurs that weren't: osteohistology supports giant ichthyosaur affinity of enigmatic large bone segments from the European Rhaetian, PeerJ, DOI: http://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.17060

was unclear for a long time. The new study now indicates that they come from ichthyosaurs. 

CREDIT

© Marcello Perillo/University of Bonn

the researchers were able to remove pieces of the bone without destroying the valuable fossils. The resulting thin cross-sections of bone make it possible to examine the microstructure. 

CREDIT

© Deborah Hutchinson/ Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

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JOURNAL

PeerJ

DOI

10.7717/peerj.17060 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

The dinosaurs that weren't: osteohistology supports giant ichthyosaur affinity of enigmatic large bone segments from the European Rhaetian

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Apr-2024

 

Humans converted at least 250,000 acres of estuaries to cities, farms in last 35 years

Most estuary conversion took place in rapidly developing, middle-income countries, highlighting opportunities for action to protect these economically and environmentally important landscapes

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION

American Geophysical Union
Press Release 24-14
For Immediate Release
9 April 2024

This press release is available online at: https://news.agu.org/press-release/humans-converted-at-least-250000-acres-of-estuaries-to-cities-farms-in-last-35-years/

 

AGU press contact:
Rebecca Dzombak, news@agu.org (UTC-4 hours)

Contact information for the researchers:
Guan-hong Lee, Inha University, ghlee@inha.ac.kr (UTC+9)
Researchers should be contacted directly for interview requests.

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WASHINGTON — Worldwide over the past 35 years, dams and land reclamation activities converted 250,000 acres of estuary — an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan — to urban land or agricultural fields, with most land conversion and estuary loss in rapidly developing countries, a new study finds. The findings could help developing countries avoid problems faced by countries that have already lost or degraded their estuaries.

Estuaries — wetland ecosystems where freshwater rivers meet saline ocean waters — are gateways connecting land and sea. They provide habitat for wildlife, sequester carbon, and serve as hubs for transport and shipping. People have been molding estuaries to fit their needs for thousands of years, and now, some countries are paying the price. Estuary degradation and loss can lower water quality, shrink and fragment critical habitats and remove coastlines’ protection from storms.

“Estuary change is really interesting, especially in 20th century, because estuaries have been altered by humans by the construction of estuarine dams and land reclamation,” said Guan-hong Lee, a geoscientist at Inha University in South Korea who led the study. “When estuaries are modified by humans, the consequences for land loss are surprisingly huge.”

Many developed countries, such as the Netherlands and Germany, have already modified or lost large areas of urban estuaries. Countries with significant modifications to their estuaries could serve as a warning of sorts for developing countries, and acting soon to conserve estuaries is an opportunity to protect developing countries’ environmental and economic benefits, Lee said.

The study was published in the AGU journal Earth’s Future, which publishes interdisciplinary research on the past, present and future of our planet and its inhabitants.

Estuary loss for urban gain

Using Landsat remote sensing data from 1984 to 2019, the researchers identified 2,396 estuaries around the world that were large enough to measure with satellite imagery (those with mouths wider than 90 meters, or 295 feet). Nearly half (47%) of these large estuaries are in Asia; the dataset includes estuaries on all major land masses except Antarctica and Greenland. They also identified land-use changes, including land conversion and dam building.

The team then measured the change in estuarine surface area and compared those changes to where land reclamation and dam building had occurred.

For the studied estuaries, between 1984 and 2019 humans converted 1,027 square kilometers (397 square miles, or 250,000 acres) of estuary to urban or agricultural lands in a process called land reclamation, the study found. Land reclamation, which can include drying land and adding sediment to build land, accounted for 20% of estuary loss. Globally, humans altered 44% of the estuaries with dams and/or land reclamation, the study found.

Economics of estuary development

To explore the relationship between estuary gain or loss and economic development, the researchers compared countries’ gross income per capita to land reclamation and estuary area. They also analyzed historical maps of high-income countries to find evidence of earlier estuary alteration and included 8 case studies of low-, middle-, and high-income countries’ estuary loss.

Middle-income countries lost the most estuarine area during the study period, and almost 90% of all land reclamation (921 square kilometers, or 356 square miles) occurred there, too. “As a country is transitioning to middle-income, they tend to increase development,” Lee said.

High-income countries lost little estuary area over the study period. In most cases, that’s because estuary alteration occurred decades earlier when they were in developing, middle-income statuses, Lee said. In those countries today, the focus has moved from development to environmental conservation efforts — attempts to undo the environmental damage that estuarine development caused.

The findings highlight the opportunities developing countries have to minimize the negative environmental and economic impacts of degraded estuaries while balancing their own economic and development needs, Lee said.

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Notes for journalists:

This study is published in Earth’s Future, an open-access AGU journal. Neither this press release nor the study is under embargo. View and download a pdf of the study here.

Paper title:

“Economic development drives massive global estuarine loss in the Anthropocene”

Authors:

·       Nathalie W. Jung, Department of Oceanography, Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea, and Department of Marine and Coastal Environmental Sciences, Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, TX, USA

·       Guan-hong Lee (corresponding author), Jongwi Chang, Department of Oceanography, Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea

·       Timothy M. Dellapenna, Department of Marine and Coastal Environmental Sciences, Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, TX, USA, and Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

·       Yoonho Jung, Department of Oceanography, Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea, and Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

·       Tae-Chang Jo, Department of Mathematics, Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea

·       Steven M. Figueroa, Department of Oceanography, Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea, and Department of Civil Engineering, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

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AGU (www.agu.org) is a global community supporting more than half a million advocates and professionals in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, AGU aims to advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.

 

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JOURNAL

Earth's Future

DOI

10.1029/2023EF003691 

ARTICLE TITLE

Economic development drives massive global estuarine loss in the Anthropocene

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Apr-2024

 

Sandia studies subterranean storage of hydrogen

Will empty petroleum reservoirs work for storing clean hydrogen?

NO SUCH THING AS EMPTY PETROLEUM RESERVES

DOE/SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

 

IMAGE: 

MATTHEW PAUL, A SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES GEOSCIENCES ENGINEER, WORKS ON A GAS ADSORPTION SYSTEM IN A FUME HOOD AS PART OF A PROJECT TO SEE IF DEPLETED PETROLEUM RESERVOIRS CAN BE USED FOR STORING CARBON-FREE HYDROGEN FUEL. 

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CREDIT: CRAIG FRITZ/SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Imagine a vast volume of porous sandstone reservoir, once full of oil and natural gas, now full of a different, carbon-free fuel — hydrogen.

Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are using computer simulations and laboratory experiments to see if depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs can be used for storing this carbon-free fuel. Hydrogen is an important clean fuel: It can be made by splitting water using solar or wind power, it can be used to generate electricity and power heavy industry, and it could be used to power fuel-cell-based vehicles. Additionally, hydrogen could be stored for months and used when energy needs outpace the supply delivered by renewable energy sources.

“Hydrogen would be good for seasonal and long-term storage,” said Sandia chemical engineer Tuan Ho, who is leading the research. “If you think of solar energy, in the summer you can produce a lot of electricity, but you don’t need a lot for heating. The excess can be turned into hydrogen and stored until winter.”

However, hydrogen contains much less “bang” in a set volume than carbon-based fuels such as natural gas or propane and is much more difficult to compress, Ho said. This means storing huge amounts of hydrogen in metal tanks on the surface is just not feasible, he added.

Hydrogen can be stored underground in salt caverns, but salt deposits are not widespread across the U.S., said Don Conley, the manager for Sandia’s underground hydrogen storage work. Therefore, Ho’s team is studying if hydrogen stored in depleted oil and gas reservoirs will get stuck in the rock, leak out, or get contaminated.

Ho’s team recently shared their findings in a paper published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy.

Leaky rocks or secure storage

First, Ho’s team studied if hydrogen would get stuck in the sandstone or shale that forms the body and seal around many oil and gas reservoirs or leak out. Sandstone is composed of sand-sized grains of minerals and rocks that have been compressed over eons; sandstone has a lot of gaps between particles and thus can store water in aquifers or form oil and gas reservoirs. Shale is mud compressed into rock and is made up of much smaller particles of clay-rich minerals. Thus, shale can form a seal around sandstone, trapping oil and natural gas.

“You want the hydrogen to stay where you inject it,” Ho said. “You don’t want it to migrate away from the storage zone and get lost. That’s just a waste of money, which is a big concern for any storage facility.”

Ho’s collaborators at the University of Oklahoma used experiments to study how hydrogen interacts with samples of sandstone and shale. They found that hydrogen does not stay inside sandstone after it is pumped out, but up to 10% of the adsorbed gas got stuck inside the shale sample, Ho said. These results were confirmed by Ho’s computer simulations.

Taking a closer look at a specific type of clay that is common in the shale around oil and gas reservoirs, Ho conducted computer simulations of the molecular interactions between layers of montmorillonite clay, water and hydrogen. He found that hydrogen does not prefer to go into the watery gaps between mineral layers of that kind of clay.

This means that the loss of hydrogen in clay due to getting stuck or moving through it would be tiny, Ho said. This is quite positive for underground storage of hydrogen. These findings on clay were published last year in the journal Sustainable Energy and Fuels.

Additional absorption experiments are being conducted at Stevens Institute of Technology and the University of Oklahoma to confirm the molecular simulation results, Ho said.

Risks of contamination

Using both experiments and simulation, Ho’s team found that residual natural gas can be released from the rock into the hydrogen when hydrogen is injected into a depleted natural gas reservoir. This means that when the hydrogen is removed for use, it will contain a small amount of natural gas, Ho said.

“That’s not terrible because natural gas still has energy, but it contains carbon, so when this hydrogen is burned, it will produce a small amount of carbon dioxide,” Ho said. “It’s something we need to be aware of.”

Ho’s team, principally Sandia postdoctoral researcher Aditya Choudhary, is currently studying the effects of hydrogen on a depleted oil reservoir and how leftover oil might contaminate or interact with hydrogen gas using both molecular simulations and experiments.

The findings from Ho’s research can be used to inform and guide large field-scale tests of underground hydrogen storage, said Conley, the manager for Sandia’s portion of the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management’s Subsurface Hydrogen Assessment, Storage, and Technology Acceleration project. The SHASTA project plans to conduct such a field-scale test in the future to demonstrate the feasibility of depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs for hydrogen storage, he added.

Additional research is needed to understand how microorganisms and other chemicals in depleted petroleum reservoirs might interact with stored hydrogen, Ho said.

“If we want to create a hydrogen economy, we really need widely distributed means of storing large quantities of hydrogen,” Conley said. “Storage in salt is excellent where it exists, but it can’t be the sole option. So, we’re turning to depleted oil and gas reservoirs and aquifers as more geologically distributed means of storing large quantities of hydrogen. It’s all in the name of decarbonizing the energy sector.”

The project is funded by Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.

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JOURNAL

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy

DOI

10.1016/j.ijhydene.2023.11.011 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Nuclear magnetic resonance and molecular simulation study of H2 and CH4 adsorption onto shale and sandstone for hydrogen geological storage