Porous Media Processes and Mathematics (PM)^2

Natural and industrial porous media is key to a wide variety of traditional and emerging engineering applications, including but not limited to oil and gas extraction from geological reservoirs, carbon capture and storage, geothermal reservoir engineering, soil sciences, groundwater remediation and protection, biological engineering, food processing, fuel cells, nano-technology, construction engineering, wood processing and printing.

We are proposing the formation of a UK wide research network focussed on porous media flow which will sit at the interface between engineering, applied mathematics, applied probability and scientific computing. The overall aim of the network is to transfer techniques, models and scientific insights between engineering and mathematics, as well as promote mobility between academia and industry. Initially, the key areas of scientific research will include: large scale computational modelling, fundamental pore-scale physics, inverse problems and history matching, reservoir simulations, soil science and shallow ecosystems, theoretical biology and physiology, groundwater remediation, subsurface storage of greenhouse gases and nuclear waste, uncertainty quantification, homogenisation and multi-scale methods, visualization, numerical analysis and random field modelling.

As well as dissemination through the annual meetings, hot-topic and training workshops, collaborative visits and visitors we will manage a Network website and a mailing list. These will both be used to advertise and promote activities of the network as well as make available collaborative work such as benchmark data sets, joint publications, working papers, comparative solution problems and software.

We already have a number of industrial contacts in the network and believe more will be created by the network. We include a number of letters of support of the proposal from a range of industry and agencies. We expect the industrial interest to grow year on year.

We also have excellent contacts to major international oil and gas companies (e.g., Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Statoil, BG Group) and will invite representatives to the annual meetings and workshops. Through our industrial contacts we will promote knowledge transfer, in particular at the workshops. We will engage with the knowledge transfer officers both at Heriot-Watt and at the ICMS to ensure a wide and lasting impact.

On a longer term we expect conference talks and journal publications will follow in mathematical, engineering and biological fields. We will use existing resources to publicize and disseminate the network and its outputs, this includes interdisciplinary conferences such as the annual Interpore and NUPUS meetings or the Gordon Research Conference of Flow in Permeable Media. The mailing list and website will both provide a lasting resource for the network and UK researchers.