Carbonate rocks...under a new light. The “Petroleum Geology Student Contest” rewards Miller Zambrano.

“Petroleum Geology Student Contest”, the first Italian contest on Earth Science research, has rewarded Miller Zambrano, PhD student at Camerino University, for his work dedicated to the characterization of carbonated rocks.

A precious contribution to this work was provided by the microtomographic investigation undertaken with synchrotron light and the data collected at Elettra. Thanks to the support of Lucia Mancini, researcher at the SYRMeP beamline, Zambrano managed to analyse with a micrometric spatial resolution the textural and petrophysical properties (i.e. shape, size, porosity, distribution of grain and pores) of some carbonate rock samples coming from central and southern Italy.

The output results are an important step to better understand the deformation process and assess the hydraulic behaviour within deformation bands affecting porous carbonates rocks.

As the only one of its kind in Italy, the first edition of “Petroleum Geology Student Contest” took place on November the 27th in the city of Matera, the Cultural Capital for 2019. The contest offered a unique opportunity for PhD students to interact with some of the leading scientific representatives of the national and international scenario and at the same time to present the results achieved to industrialists and professionals.