Zuansi Cai
Zuansi Cai

Dr Zuansi Cai

Associate Professor

 0131 455 2365

  Z.Cai@napier.ac.uk

  

Biography

Zuansi Cai is an Environmental Modeller and a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College in energy storage. He is a recipient of The Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship 2021/22. Prior to Edinburgh Napier University, Zuansi conducted research as a Research Associate/Fellow for three multi-million pound RCUK and EU research projects at University of Sheffield and Queens’ University Belfast. His research interests include Energy Storage, Renewable Energy and Intelligent Energy Systems, and Water Resources & Climate Change. His earlier research experience included solid waste technology, soil and groundwater remediation, flow and transport modelling as well as uncertainty quantification, Groundwater Risk Assessment of Fracking for Shale gas.
Zuansi's research is funded by The Royal Academy of Engineering, ETP, Horizon 2020, industries, etc. He has recently developed a new numerical simulator for large-scale hydrogen and gas-mixture storage in subsurface. The simulator (GPSFLOW) is capable of simulating non-isothermal, multi-phase and multi-component flow in subsurface storage reservoir for Hydrogen and compressed air energy storage as well as geothermal storage.

School

Research Groups

Themes

Research Areas

Esteem

Advisory panels and expert committees or witness

  • Expert witness: China Plan "111" (2017-2021): 8m CNY International Cooperation

 

Conference Organising Activity

  • Conference Chair: Geo-Energy Workshop, Edinburgh Napier University, May 2019
  • Member of Scientific Committee: the International Conference on Sustainable Energy and Green Technology , Malaysia, 2018

 

External Examining/Validations

  • External Examining: MSc Thesis, Durham University, 2009

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Fellow of The Higher Education Academy
  • Fellow of The Geological Society

 

Grant Funding Panel Member

  • The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Panel Member: UPGro, 2013

 

Grant Reviewer

  • Member of EPSRC Peer Review College
  • EPSRC Associate College Membership
  • Reviewer for Leverhulme Trust Grant Application 2017

 

Invited Speaker

  • Seminar speaker: Geo-energy at Edinburgh University, Kings Buildings- Edinburgh, Feb 2022
  • Seminar Speaker: Wuhan University, Wuhan: China, 2018
  • Conference talk: The Geological Society of London meeting—Rain, Rivers and Reservoirs, Edinburgh, Sept. 2016
  • Seminar speaker: The International Associate Hydrogeologists (Irish Group), Dublin, 2014

 

Membership of Professional Body

  • Member of American Geophysical Union

 

Public/Community Engagement

  • "Can we store renewable energy for an entire city" has been recently published in The Red Triangle 2019-2020. The article showcases my on-going research in energy storage to ENU alumni and public.

 

Visiting Positions

  • Visiting Research Fellow at Queen's University Belfast

 

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Date


34 results

Analysis of groundwater-level response to rainfall and estimation of annual recharge in fractured hard rock aquifers, NW Ireland

Journal Article
Cai, Z., & Ofterdinger, U. (2016)
Analysis of groundwater-level response to rainfall and estimation of annual recharge in fractured hard rock aquifers, NW Ireland. Journal of Hydrology, 535, 71-84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.01.066
Despite fractured hard rock aquifers underlying over 65% of Ireland, knowledge of key processes controlling groundwater recharge in these bedrock systems is inadequately const...

Numerical assessment of potential impacts of hydraulically fractured Bowland Shale on overlying aquifers

Journal Article
Cai, Z., & Ofterdinger, U. (2014)
Numerical assessment of potential impacts of hydraulically fractured Bowland Shale on overlying aquifers. Water Resources Research, 50, 6236-6259. https://doi.org/10.1002/2013WR014943
Natural gas extracted from hydraulically fractured shale formations potentially has a big impact on the global energy landscape. However, there are concerns of potential envir...

Groundwater Monitoring and Assessment. Based in part on the article “Groundwater Monitoring and Assessment” by Steven F. Thornton, David N. Lerner, and Ruth M. Davison, which appeared in the Encyclopedia of Environmetrics

Other
Cai, Z., Thornton, S. F., & Lerner, D. N. (2013)
Groundwater Monitoring and Assessment. Based in part on the article “Groundwater Monitoring and Assessment” by Steven F. Thornton, David N. Lerner, and Ruth M. Davison, which appeared in the Encyclopedia of Environmetrics
Groundwater is an important component of water supplies in most countries. It exists in aquifers under unsaturated and saturated conditions. The flow of groundwater is primari...

Assessing TCE Source Bioremediation by Geostatistical Analysis of a Flux Fence

Journal Article
Cai, Z., Wilson, R. D., & Lerner, D. N. (2012)
Assessing TCE Source Bioremediation by Geostatistical Analysis of a Flux Fence. Groundwater, 50(6), 908-917. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6584.2012.00916.x
Mass discharge across transect planes is increasingly used as a metric for performance assessment of in situ groundwater remediation systems. Mass discharge estimates using co...

Increasing confidence in treatment performance assessment using geostatistical methods

Conference Proceeding
Cai, Z., & Wilson, R. (2011)
Increasing confidence in treatment performance assessment using geostatistical methods. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Remediation of Chlorinated and Recalcitrant Compounds. , (213-216
It is well established that the presence of dense non-aqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs) such as trichloroethylene (TCE) in aquifer systems represents a very long-term source of g...

Increasing Confidence in Mass Discharge Estimates Using Geostatistical Methods

Journal Article
Cai, Z., Wilson, R. D., Cardiff, M. A., & Kitanidis, P. K. (2011)
Increasing Confidence in Mass Discharge Estimates Using Geostatistical Methods. Groundwater, 49(2), 197-208. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6584.2010.00709.x
Mass discharge is one metric rapidly gaining acceptance for assessing the performance of in situ groundwater remediation systems. Multilevel sampling transects provide the dat...

The Hyporheic Handbook: a handbook on the groundwater-surface water interface and hyporheic zone for environment managers

Report
Buss, S., Cai, Z., Cardenas, B., Fleckenstein, J., Hannah, D., Heppell, K., …Wood, P. (2009)
The Hyporheic Handbook: a handbook on the groundwater-surface water interface and hyporheic zone for environment managers. Bristol: Environment Agency
Buss, S., Cai, Z., Cardenas, B., Fleckenstein, J., Hannah, D., Heppell, K., …Wood, P. (2009). The Hyporheic Handbook: a handbook on the groundwater-surface water interface and...

Zero-valent iron fracture reactive barriers for remediating chlorinated solvent contaminants in fractured aquifers

Conference Proceeding
Cai, Z., Thomson, N., Lerner, D., Wlison, R., Mclaren, R., & Oswald, S. (2008)
Zero-valent iron fracture reactive barriers for remediating chlorinated solvent contaminants in fractured aquifers
A novel remediation strategy, the zero-valent iron fracture reactive barrier (Fe0 FRB), is proposed to clean up chlorinated solvent pollution of groundwater in a fractured aqu...

Channel flow and trichloroethylene treatment in a partly iron-filled fracture: Experimental and model results

Journal Article
Cai, Z., Merly, C., Thomson, N. R., Wilson, R. D., & Lerner, D. N. (2007)
Channel flow and trichloroethylene treatment in a partly iron-filled fracture: Experimental and model results. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, 93(1-4), 284-303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jconhyd.2007.04.001
Technical developments have now made it possible to emplace granular zero-valent iron (Fe0) in fractured media to create a Fe0 fracture reactive barrier (Fe0 FRB) for the trea...

Conceptual analysis of zero-valent iron fracture reactive barriers for remediating a trichloroethylene plume in a chalk aquifer

Journal Article
Cai, Z., Lerner, D. N., McLaren, R. G., & Wilson, R. D. (2007)
Conceptual analysis of zero-valent iron fracture reactive barriers for remediating a trichloroethylene plume in a chalk aquifer. Water Resources Research, 43(3), https://doi.org/10.1029/2006wr004946
A novel concept, the Fe0 fracture reactive barrier (Fe0 FRB), is proposed to clean up chlorinated solvent pollution of groundwater in a chalk aquifer. Iron particles, suspende...

Pre-Napier Funded Projects

  • REMEDIATE: a €3.7m EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN (2015-2018) €1.1m awarded to Queen’s University Belfast, Co-I)

Current Post Grad projects

Previous Post Grad projects

Non-Napier PhD or MSc by Research supervisions

  • Binbo Xu, Jinan University -Edinburgh Napier University, Guangzhou & Edinburgh, ongoing, 2019-now
  • Lichao Yang, University of Geosciences & Edinburgh Napier University, Beijing & Edinburgh, completed, 2019-2020
  • Chaobin Guo, Tongji University & Edinburgh Napier University, Shanghai and Edinburgh, completed, 2017