Principal Investigator Gaute Linga writes:
“When you add milk to a cup of coffee you can efficiently mix the components by stirring with a spoon: the system is brought from a state of separation – where the coffee and the milk exist in separate domains – to uniformity – where the coffee and milk are indistinguishably blended. In porous media such as soil, rock or blood vessels in the human body, it is the complicated flow paths that dictate how efficient the mixing is. Since mixing can bring chemicals into contact, it subsequently determines how fast chemical reactions occur. Mixing, therefore, has consequences for a broad range of natural and industrial processes; from CO2 storage below the Earth’s crust to drug delivery in the human body. In multiphase flow – when two or more liquids or gases are flowing together through the pores – the flow will vary in a complex way both in time and space, and we hitherto know very little about how the mixing occurs under these circumstances. The goal of this project is to reveal the mechanisms behind and to establish a physical explanation for how mixing occurs in multiphase flow through porous media. We will achieve this by an interdisciplinary approach which develops and combines novel numerical, experimental and theoretical methods.”
M4 brings together world-leading, complementary expertise on its two key ingredients: multiphase flow and mixing in porous media. It involves partners from the University of Oslo, the University of Rennes and SINTEF Digital, and is an interdisciplinary collaboration unifying theoretical, numerical and experimental approaches with perspectives to the many applications of microfluidics.
Read more about the M4 project here
Project participants:
Gaute Linga, Knut Jørgen Måløy, Eirik Grude Flekkøy, François Renard, Luiza Angheluta-Bauer, August Johansson (SINTEF Digital), Francesca Watson (SINTEF Digital), Tanguy Le Borgne (University of Rennes 1 and University of Oslo)