Magnetic Resonance: From the Laboratory to Industrial Practice
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Cambridge
Department Name: Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology
Abstract
Magnetic Resonance Imaging is widely used in hospitals to image blood flow and the internal structure of the human body. Our work focuses on extending these magnetic resonance (MR) techniques to study chemical products and processes. Over the past 5 years we have established an internationally respected skill base in developing MR techniques to study transport in porous materials (e.g. oil flow in rocks), transport and reaction in 3-D systems (e.g. chemical conversion occurring inside catalytic reactors) and processing structure-function relationships (e.g. effect of extrusion processing on the structure and texture of food products). We believe that we now have the research base in place to make a step-change in exploiting MR in industrial practice. To achieve this, we wish to extend our research activities by (i) improving signal-to-noise ratios and speeding up data acquisition times such that we will be able to image hydrodynamics and chemical conversion over much shorter timescales than we can now; our target is to reduce data acquisition times by an order of magnitude; and (ii) developing robust methods for mapping pH, oxygen content, temperature and pressure, and constructing realistic process environments (e.g. elevated pressure and temperature) within the MR magnet. As well as being able to make new measurements under realistic process conditions, these data will also enable us to understand the microscopic physical and chemical processes occurring in these complex systems such that we can work with those developing numerical codes of chemical processes to improve and validate the scientific assumptions and models incorporated in their process design tools. Finally, in collaboration with experts in low-field MR hardware (which is cheap, compact and relatively maintenance free compared with high-field technology) we will bring together our advances in reduced data acquisitions times and signal enhancement with their magnet technology to demonstrate MR measurements in the industrial R&D laboratory and eventually on plant.
Organisations
Publications
Abbott A
(2011)
Glycerol eutectics as sustainable solvent systems
in Green Chem.
Abeynaike A
(2012)
The experimental measurement and modelling of sedimentation and creaming for glycerol/biodiesel droplet dispersions
in Chemical Engineering Science
Akpa B
(2012)
Solvent effects in the hydrogenation of 2-butanone
in Journal of Catalysis
Beauregard DA
(2010)
Using non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to assess the reduction of Cr(VI) using a biofilm-palladium catalyst.
in Biotechnology and bioengineering
Benning M
(2014)
Phase reconstruction from velocity-encoded MRI measurements--a survey of sparsity-promoting variational approaches.
in Journal of magnetic resonance (San Diego, Calif. : 1997)
Blythe TW
(2017)
PFG NMR and Bayesian analysis to characterise non-Newtonian fluids.
in Journal of magnetic resonance (San Diego, Calif. : 1997)
Blythe TW
(2015)
Characterising the rheology of non-Newtonian fluids using PFG-NMR and cumulant analysis.
in Journal of magnetic resonance (San Diego, Calif. : 1997)
Bostock MJ
(2012)
Compressed sensing reconstruction of undersampled 3D NOESY spectra: application to large membrane proteins.
in Journal of biomolecular NMR
Bowron D
(2010)
Structure and Dynamics of 1-Ethyl-3-methylimidazolium Acetate via Molecular Dynamics and Neutron Diffraction
in The Journal of Physical Chemistry B
Chandrasekera T
(2012)
A comparison of magnetic resonance imaging and electrical capacitance tomography: An air jet through a bed of particles
in Powder Technology
Description | This was a Platform Grant and therefore covered a wide range of method development in magnetic resonance in application to chemical engineering and the process industries. A large number of the projects initiated within this grant are now supported by industrial funding. Research methods which have been continued in such projects include undersampling methods in NMR such as compressed sensing and Bayesian methods; in situ/operando studies of catalysis; and new measurements capabilities at low field. Industrial collaborators include: Johnson Matthey, Shell, Schlumberger, BP and AstraZeneca. |
First Year Of Impact | 2013 |
Sector | Chemicals,Energy,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
Impact Types | Economic |
Title | Research data supporting "Retaining both discrete and smooth features in 1D and 2D NMR relaxation and diffusion experiments" |
Description | data used in associated publication |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Title | Research data supporting "Study of bubble dynamics in gas-solid fluidized beds using ultrashort echo time (UTE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)" |
Description | data associated with paper |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |