Multi-scale Exploration of MultiPhase Physics In FlowS (MEMPHIS)

This project is an opportunity to harness the synergy between world-leading scientists from four prestigious institutions to create the next generation modelling tools for complex multiphase flows. These flows are central to micro-fluidics, virtually every processing and manufacturing technology, oil-and-gas and nuclear applications, and biomedical applications such as lithotripsy and laser-surgery cavitation. The ability to predict the behaviour of multiphase flows reliably will address a major challenge of tremendous economic, scientific, and societal benefit to the UK. The Programme will achieve this goal by developing a single modelling framework that establishes, for the first time, a transparent linkage between input (models and/or data) and prediction; this will allow systematic error-source identification, and, therefore, directed, optimal, model-driven experimentation, to maximise prediction accuracy. The framework will also feature optimal selection of massively-parallelisable numerical methods, capable of running efficiently on 10^5-10^6 core supercomputers, optimally-adaptive, three-dimensional resolution, and the most sophisticated multi-scale physical models. This framework will offer unprecedented resolution of multi-scale, multiphase phenomena, minimising the reliance on correlations and empiricism. The investigators' synergy, and their long-standing industrial collaborations, will ensure that this Programme will result in a paradigm-shift in multiphase flow research worldwide. We will demonstrate our capabilities in two areas of strategic importance to the UK: by providing insights into novel manufacturing processes, and reliable prediction of multiphase flow regime transitions in the oil-and-gas industry. Our framework will be sufficiently general to address a number of other industrial and environmental global challenges, which we detail herein.

Our Programme will lead to the resolution of a number of fundamental open problems in multiphase flows leading to the development of validated simulation tools for the academic and industrial community, with impact on the UK economy, people and society. Our transformative research will impact:
- The FMCG and fine chemicals/catalysis sectors, via the ability to design novel flow processes to produce controlled, multiphase structures.
- The oil-and-gas sector, where it will lead to validated, powerful numerical predictive tools employed for flow assurance by industry, supplanting existing far less reliable ones.
- The nuclear industry, where our models and simulation tools will support the development of intensified evaporation and extractive separation processes.
We will also impact a number of other applications, e.g. atomisation and fuel release in engines (automotive), lava flows, ocean and tsunami modelling (geophysics).
We will impact the non-academic community through a number of industrial partners:
- Chevron: simulation of gas-liquid flow regime transitions in pipes of varying diameter.
- Johnson Matthey: multi-scale simulation of the blending of miscible and immiscible complex fluids in the manufacture of catalyst slurries and washcoats.
- Procter & Gamble: production of bespoke multiple-emulsions for structured-product manufacturing; simulation of downwards-annular flow reactors for personal care products manufacturing.
- CD-Adapco: rational development of state-of-the-art sub-grid models and closures, leading to significant improvement of CFD tools.
- AspenTech: the need to improve the predictive capabilities of pressure drop and heat transfer methods for liquid-liquid flows.
We will engage with our partners through a variety of ways:
- Our Steering Committee (SC) will advise on the results that can maximise industrial impact;
- Our existing consortium of industrial partners at Imperial (oil-and-gas) and Birmingham (FMCG, pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals) will be integrated to provide a platform for dissemination, identification of opportunities for technical solutions to problems, and cross-fertilization of ideas;
- CIKTN, special interest groups, ERC, EU FP networks will provide other dissemination platforms and mechanisms for technological transfer;
- Twice-yearly meetings with the most prominent scientists, engineers and industrialists in multiphase flow, including aerospace and automotive industries, civil engineering and geophysics; major symposia half-way through the Programme and in its final year to present our major findings, advertised as widely as possible.
- We will run training programmes and encourage secondments and/or extended visits by industrialists to our research groups, and ensure that our researchers spend secondments in our partner companies;
- Generic, commercially insensitive, software developed as part of the Programme will be released as open-source;
- An active Programme Manager will drive commercialisation, manage all secondments, and our dedicated website.
We will transfer technology through early release of research software and/or experimental techniques; the secondment of researchers and/or commercialisation. We will also disseminate our findings widely through papers in prestigious journals, presentations at national and international conferences, a seminar and webinar series to which the most prominent scientist, , engineers and industrialists in the area will be invited (including 'adjacent' disciplines), active national and international collaborations.
Delivery of this research programme will deliver societal impact via:
- Sustainable processing due to superior equipment design, reduced process scale, downtime and wastage;
- Public and young people engagement activities;
- Bespoke consumer goods with advanced properties.