Egor Dontsov

Chief Scientist

[email protected]

Egor Dontsov is a scientist with over ten years of academic and industrial experience.

Prior to joining ResFrac, Egor worked at W.D. Von Gonten Laboratories, the University of Houston as Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the University of British Columbia as Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow in the Mathematics Department. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota and Bachelor’s degree with honors in Physics at Novosibirsk State University.

Egor’s primary expertise area lies in theoretical and numerical modeling of hydraulic fracturing, proppant transport, and geomechanics. He has written and been exposed to the development of several academic and commercial simulators of hydraulic fracturing, proppant transport, and reservoir flow. Egor served as a reviewer for dozens of journals and several scientific proposals within and outside of the US, invited multiple times to give keynote lectures and seminars, as well as participated in organization of minisymposia at international conferences and workshops. Egor has published over fifty peer reviewed papers and received several awards, including Outstanding Technical Editor Service Award from SPE Journal in 2018, N.G.W. Cook award, as well as Best Dissertation award from University of Minnesota to name a few.

On the personal side, Egor leads an active lifestyle, and has climbed over 100 mountains. Over the last decade, he has also enjoyed cross-country skiing, running, mountain and road biking, hiking, and downhill and backcountry skiing. He has recently moved to triathlons. Within a single year, Egor finished his first ever triathlon – ironman distance, earned All World Athlete status, and qualified for US Triathlon National Championship.

Click here for a list of Egors’ publications.

Egor's posts

Automatic Report Generation in ResFracPro

This month’s release has a feature that I am particularly excited about – automatic report generation. The reports are generated automatically when a simulation finishes. Also, reports can be generated on-demand for simulations that have already been completed. The reports are highly customizable, allowing the user to generate different line plots, 3D visualizations, preview plots, and tabular data. The user can provide a template PPT, so that the report is made with their preferred PPT style.

Introducing ResFrac’s New Multisector Capability

This month’s ResFrac release has a ton of new capabilities. The most important is called ‘multisector’ – the ability to split different sections of the well across different computers. This capability provides a computationally efficient and practical way to run larger models and handle complex scenarios. Hats off to Danial Zeinabady and Michael Nole, who have been the main developers on this project. Beyond them, it’s been a big team effort, pulling in folks from cloud, simulator, and user-success. First, let’s review – what is sector modeling? Why do we need a ‘multi’ version of it?

Abstract illustration with multiple outlined maps over a green-to-yellow gradient and light beams.

The influence of well configuration on water loss in Enhanced Geothermal Systems

Recently, ‘water loss’ has been a hot topic of discussion for EGS. Fervo reported that they have been producing only 70% of the fluid volumes that they have been injecting at their Project Red. The FORGE project reported a roughly 10% water loss rate. Because projects will have finite water rights, these results have led to concern that growth of EGS will be limited by excessive water consumption. This is a valid concern, and water availability is a legitimate factor in site-selection and project engineering. However, I believe that the problem has been overstated.