INTRODUCING DR. YILIN FAN
The department was lucky enough to hire an Assistant Professor this year to bring expertise in the Production and Midstream areas of Petroleum Engineering. Dr. Yilin Fan started in summer of 2018, and has fit in perfectly with the flow of the department and our students.
Dr. Fan received her undergraduate degree from China University of Petroleum (East China) with a B.S. in Oil and Gas Storage and Transportation Engineering. In 2010 she joined University of Tulsa as a master’s student in Petroleum Engineering, graduating in 2012, then staying to receive her PhD in 2017. After graduating, she was appointed a Post Doc position, which she held for an additional year before coming to Mines.
Yilin’s PhD work at University of Tulsa was related to multiphase flow in pipes. The study was
Dr. Yilin Fan
done in order to look at two main areas, experimental and modeling work on the onset of liquid accumulation in order to understand what the lowest gas velocity is to avoid liquid accumulation, thus preventing pipeline internal corrosion. The second area is the characterization of pseudo-slug flow, a flow pattern that had not been well understood due to its complexity.
She was involved in several projects during her Post Doc appointment, including one with an industry partner look- ing at air and emulsion flow in horizontal pipes. She also co-advised two master students, whose projects were gas lift in horizontal wells and intermittent flow analysis in inclined pipes.
Since she started at Mines, she has taught one section of Mechanics of Petroleum Production and co-taught Petro- leum Midstream design with Trent Green in the spring semester. This was a great starting point to get to know our
undergraduate students better and she has praised the aptitude and work ethic of Mines
students because of these courses.
Currently, she is advising two PhD students. Ayush Rastogi is studying the onset of liquid accumulation in large diameter pipes, experimentally and theoretically. He has finished the experimental program and developed a new unified model to predict the onset of liquid accumulation. They will present their findings in this upcoming ATCE 2019. Kanat Karatayev, another PhD student, is working on the emulsion characterization for hydrate formation application. She is bringing on a new Master and a new PhD student for this fall semester, who will be working on some projects in the production area.
If that weren’t enough, Yilin has also been extremely active in collaborative projects across campus and is already becoming a huge resources for many different projects and departments. Her recent interest lies in the fiber optic sensing (FOS). She is now collaborating with Geophysic’s Reservoir Characterization Project (RCP) and exploring the application of FOS technology in production and multiphase flow area. They have finished some preliminary experimental studies, which will be presented at the SPE DAS Workshop in Denver this August and SEG DAS post-convention workshop this Septem- ber.
Aysush with the equipment for his experiments.
The Petroleum Department believes Yilin is an integral addition to the department ex- panding on a huge piece of industry that was missing from our program. Of course living in Colorado and working in Golden doesn’t hurt either!
Welcome Dr. Fan, we feel lucky to have you as a part of our growing team.
MIDSTREAM MINOR CAPSTONE
With tremedous support from indstury, techicial advice from Adjunct Professor Trent Green and Assistant Professor Dr. Yilin Fan, our first class of Colorado School of Mines Petroluem Midstream Minor Degree holders graduated in spring 2019. We especially thank all the experts from the industy who supported our design class – PEGN463 Pe- troleum Midstream Design – this past semester, and congratulate all the students who earned the first petroleum midstream minor degree!
It was our greatest honor to have Meritage Midstream this year who provided us a real industrial project on fuel gas conditioning for their pipeline network as the senior design project. Justin Eckes, one of the students, said “this project was a great way to experience an engineering project first hand. It required consideration from ideation to
16 COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES