Multiphase Multicomponent Lattice Boltzmann Method for Modelling Wetting on Liquid Infused Surfaces
Lead Research Organisation:
Durham University
Department Name: Physics
Abstract
Liquid infused surfaces (LIS) are a novel class of surfaces inspired by nature (pitcher plants) that repel any kind of liquid. LIS are constructed by impregnating rough, porous or textured surfaces with wetting lubricants, thereby conferring them advantageous surface properties including self-cleaning, anti-fouling, and enhanced heat transfer. These functional surfaces have the potential to solve a wide range of societal, environmental and industrial challenges. Examples range from household food waste, where more than 20% is due to packaging and residues; to mitigating heat exchanger fouling, estimated to be responsible for 2.5% of worldwide CO2 emissions.
Despite their significant potential, however, to date LIS coatings are not yet viable in practice for the vast majority of applications due to their lack of robustness and durability. At a fundamental level, the presence of the lubricant gives rise to a novel but poorly understood class of wetting phenomena due to the rich interplay between the thin lubricant film dynamics and the macroscopic drop dynamics, such as an effective long-range interaction between droplets and delayed coalescence. It also leads to numerous open challenges unique to LIS, such as performance degradation due to lubricant depletion.
Integral to this EPSRC Fellowship project is an innovative numerical approach based on the Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to solve the equations of motion for the fluids. A key advantage of LBM is that key coarse-grained molecular information can be incorporated into the description of interfacial phenomena, while remaining computationally tractable to study the macroscopic flow dynamics relevant for LIS. LBM is also highly flexible to account for changes in the interface shape and topology, complex surface geometry, and it is well-suited for high performance computing. The developed simulation framework will be the first that can fully address the complexity of wetting dynamics on LIS, and the code will be made available open source through OpenLB.
Harnessing the LBM simulations and supported by experimental data from four project partners, I will provide the much-needed step change in our understanding of LIS. The expected outcomes include: (i) design criteria that minimise lubricant depletion, considered the main weakness of LIS; (ii) new insights into droplet and lubricant meniscus dynamics on LIS across a wide range of lubricant availability and wettability conditions; and (iii) quantitative models for droplet interactions on LIS mediated by the lubricant. These key challenges are shared by the majority, if not all, of LIS applications. Addressing them is the only way forward to better engineer the design of LIS.
Finally, the computational tools and fundamental insights developed in the project will be exploited to explore two potentially disruptive technologies based on LIS, which are highly relevant for the energy-water-environment nexus in sustainable development. First, I will investigate application in carbon capture, exploiting how liquids can be immobilised in LIS with a large surface to volume ratio, in collaboration with ExxonMobil. More specifically, liquid amine-based CO2 capture is an important and commercially practised method, but the costly infrastructure and operation prohibit its widespread implementation. Excitingly, LIS may provide a solution to a more economical carbon capture method using liquid amine. Second, motivated by the current gap of 47% in global water supply and demand, as well as environmental pressure to reduce the use of surfactants, I will examine new approaches to clean in collaboration with Procter & Gamble. The key idea is to induce dewetting of unwanted liquid droplets on solid surfaces using a thin film of formulation liquid, thus introducing wettability alteration more locally and using much reduced resources.
Despite their significant potential, however, to date LIS coatings are not yet viable in practice for the vast majority of applications due to their lack of robustness and durability. At a fundamental level, the presence of the lubricant gives rise to a novel but poorly understood class of wetting phenomena due to the rich interplay between the thin lubricant film dynamics and the macroscopic drop dynamics, such as an effective long-range interaction between droplets and delayed coalescence. It also leads to numerous open challenges unique to LIS, such as performance degradation due to lubricant depletion.
Integral to this EPSRC Fellowship project is an innovative numerical approach based on the Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to solve the equations of motion for the fluids. A key advantage of LBM is that key coarse-grained molecular information can be incorporated into the description of interfacial phenomena, while remaining computationally tractable to study the macroscopic flow dynamics relevant for LIS. LBM is also highly flexible to account for changes in the interface shape and topology, complex surface geometry, and it is well-suited for high performance computing. The developed simulation framework will be the first that can fully address the complexity of wetting dynamics on LIS, and the code will be made available open source through OpenLB.
Harnessing the LBM simulations and supported by experimental data from four project partners, I will provide the much-needed step change in our understanding of LIS. The expected outcomes include: (i) design criteria that minimise lubricant depletion, considered the main weakness of LIS; (ii) new insights into droplet and lubricant meniscus dynamics on LIS across a wide range of lubricant availability and wettability conditions; and (iii) quantitative models for droplet interactions on LIS mediated by the lubricant. These key challenges are shared by the majority, if not all, of LIS applications. Addressing them is the only way forward to better engineer the design of LIS.
Finally, the computational tools and fundamental insights developed in the project will be exploited to explore two potentially disruptive technologies based on LIS, which are highly relevant for the energy-water-environment nexus in sustainable development. First, I will investigate application in carbon capture, exploiting how liquids can be immobilised in LIS with a large surface to volume ratio, in collaboration with ExxonMobil. More specifically, liquid amine-based CO2 capture is an important and commercially practised method, but the costly infrastructure and operation prohibit its widespread implementation. Excitingly, LIS may provide a solution to a more economical carbon capture method using liquid amine. Second, motivated by the current gap of 47% in global water supply and demand, as well as environmental pressure to reduce the use of surfactants, I will examine new approaches to clean in collaboration with Procter & Gamble. The key idea is to induce dewetting of unwanted liquid droplets on solid surfaces using a thin film of formulation liquid, thus introducing wettability alteration more locally and using much reduced resources.
Organisations
- Durham University (Fellow, Lead Research Organisation)
- University College London (Collaboration)
- ExxonMobil (United States) (Project Partner)
- University College London (Project Partner)
- Washington University in St. Louis (Project Partner)
- Procter & Gamble (United States) (Project Partner)
- Max Planck Institutes (Project Partner)
- University of Edinburgh (Project Partner)
- Agency for Science, Technology and Research (Project Partner)
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Project Partner)
Publications
Avis SJ
(2022)
A robust and memory-efficient transition state search method for complex energy landscapes.
in The Journal of chemical physics
Goodband S
(2022)
Development of a setup to characterize capillary liquid bridges between liquid infused surfaces
in AIP Advances
Krause M
(2021)
OpenLB-Open source lattice Boltzmann code
in Computers & Mathematics with Applications
Law JO
(2023)
A bending rigidity parameter for stress granule condensates.
in Science advances
Oktasendra F
(2023)
Phase field simulation of liquid filling on grooved surfaces for complete, partial, and pseudo-partial wetting cases.
in The Journal of chemical physics
Panter J
(2023)
Rough capillary rise
in Communications Physics
Pelizzari M
(2023)
Droplet Self-Propulsion on Slippery Liquid-Infused Surfaces with Dual-Lubricant Wedge-Shaped Wettability Patterns.
in Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids
Sammartino C
(2022)
Three-dimensional printed liquid diodes with tunable velocity: Design guidelines and applications for liquid collection and transport
in Physics of Fluids
Semprebon C
(2021)
Apparent contact angle of drops on liquid infused surfaces: geometric interpretation.
in Soft matter
Shek ACM
(2022)
Spontaneous phase separation of ternary fluid mixtures.
in Soft matter
Description | Fluid Mechanics of Wettability-Patterned Liquid Surfaces |
Amount | £425,671 (GBP) |
Funding ID | RPG-2022-140 |
Organisation | The Leverhulme Trust |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 02/2023 |
End | 02/2026 |
Description | Liquid Evaporation of Structured Surfaces |
Amount | $100,000 (USD) |
Organisation | ExxonMobil |
Sector | Private |
Country | United States |
Start | 01/2023 |
End | 07/2024 |
Description | Liquid Evaporation of Structured Surfaces (IAA Project) |
Amount | £14,771 (GBP) |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2023 |
End | 07/2024 |
Description | Ternary Dewetting: The Flow Physics of Cleaning using Limited Resources |
Amount | £98,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | 2642715 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2021 |
End | 09/2025 |
Description | UK Consortium on Mesoscale Engineering Sciences (UKCOMES) |
Amount | £338,586 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/X035875/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2023 |
End | 12/2026 |
Description | Unravelling the Mechanisms of Self-Cleaning on Superhydrophobic and Liquid-Infused Surfaces |
Amount | £346,187 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/X028410/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 04/2023 |
End | 03/2026 |
Description | UKCOMES |
Organisation | University College London |
Department | UK Consortium on Mesoscale Engineering Sciences |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | I am the work package leader on multiphase and interfacial flows |
Collaborator Contribution | This is a UK wide consortium on mesoscale engineering simulations. It provides opportunities to network and collaborate. It also provides access to HPC facilities. |
Impact | This is a multidisciplinary collaboration, involving mathematics, physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering. |
Start Year | 2023 |
Title | OpenLB Release 1.5: Open Source Lattice Boltzmann Code |
Description | The OpenLB project provides a C++ package for the implementation of lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM) that is general enough to address a vast range of tansport problems, e.g. in computational fluid dynamics. The source code is publicly available and constructed in a well readable, modular way. This enables for a fast implementation of both simple academic test problems and advanced engineering applications. It is also easily extensible to include new physical content. Official website: www.openlb.net/ Release comments: support for GPUs and vectorized collision steps on CPU, complete overhaul of the core Dynamics and PostProcessor concepts, new improved resolved particle system as well as the ability to simulate free surface flows and reactions; compatibility tested on: various Linux distributions (NixOS 21.11, Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2), Windows WSL 1 and 2, Mac OS 11.6, compilers (GCC 9, 10, 11; Clang 13; Intel C++ 19, 2021.4; Nvidia CUDA 11.4; Nvidia HPC SDK 21.3), MPI (OpenMPI 3.1, 4.1; Intel MPI 2021.3.0) |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | The software is used academics and industrial researchers worldwide. |
URL | https://zenodo.org/record/3625764 |
Description | Biweekly discussion with ExxonMobil |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Biweekly discussion with ExxonMobil as they are an industrial partner supporting this grant. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
Description | Monthly discussion with P&G |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Monthly discussion with P&G as they are one of the industrial partners of the grant. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022,2023 |
Description | Workshop on Droplet and Flow Interactions with Bio-Inspired and Smart Surfaces |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | The event lasted for two days. The first day of the workshop focused on the science of wetting and interfacial phenomena, and it was attended by academics, postgraduate students, and industry representatives. The second day focused on career development of early career researchers, where speakers from various background (several industrial sectors, patent law, teaching, academic research) share their career experience. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |