The surface of old paintings often exhibits a series of cracks, reminiscent of the cracks which develop on parched ground during a drought. In both cases, the cracks develop over time as a result of surface desiccation. In fact, the evaporation of the solvent from a film of a colloidal suspension induces the formation of
Cleaning is a regular and important process in the food, bioprocessing and pharmaceutical sectors, and is essential to remove fouling deposits and avoid contamination or product crossover. Industrial cleaning is often performed in place, by circulating liquids through the processing equipment in order to remove any residual product. These operations incur penalties in terms of
Volcanic eruptions threaten more than one in ten people worldwide, with the greatest risk at volcanoes reawakening after long quiescence. In these settings, eruptions are often explosive and nearby communities may be unprepared. After obtaining his PhD at IEEF, Dr Eric Newland has been working on the NERC-funded project “FEVER: Forecasting Eruptions at Volcanoes after
Turbulent flows are known to broaden with downstream distance, owing to the entrainment and mixing of ambient fluid into the flow. In the special case where the background is non-turbulent, the entrainment across the interface between the turbulent flow and the non-turbulent ambient is driven by viscous diffusion of the turbulent fluid into the ambient.
This week’s scheduled speaker, Angus Fotherby, was unwell and could not give the first seminar of the new year. We wish him a quick recovery and hope he will be able to return before the end of term to tell us about Chromium contamination and remediation in India. Today, professor Andy Woods discussed a number
Investigating exsolution of metal nanoparticles is an area of evolving interest. Metal nanoparticles have been found to exsolve from metal oxides in the perovskite family under reducing conditions and investigated as fuel cell anodes. Professor Stephen Skinner works at the Department of Materials at Imperial College, and today spoke about the research his group has been carrying
The storage of renewably-generated energy as hydrogen via the electrolysis of water is a fundamental cornerstone of a sustainable hydrogen economy. Conventional electrolysers usually require stable power inputs in order to operate effectively and safely and so may be unsuited to harnessing renewable power, which is often intermittent and diffuse. Professor Mark Symes, from the
During the last fifteen years there has been a paradigm shift in the continuum modelling of granular materials, most notably with the development of rheological models, but also with significant advances in theories for particle segregation. Professor Nico Gray from the University of Manchester has developed new theoretical and numerical frameworks which couple granular flows
Professor Joe Howe is the Net Zero Professor at the University of Lincoln and the academic lead for the Humber Industrial Cluster. The Humber Cluster spans both banks of the Humber Estuary, connected by the Humber Bridge and hosting the ports of Goole, Grimsby, Hull, Immingham and Killingholme. £18 bn of the UK’s economy is
Particle-driven convection occurs when a layer of fluid containing dense particles is located above a layer of clear, particle-free fluid. This can drive a variation on the classical Rayleigh-Taylor instability, where the particles induce the density difference between the layers. Variants of this instability occur in a number of geophysical flows, such as the undersides