Dear InterPore colleagues,

I got involved in a strong discussion with a friend who in Dutch would be called a “wappie”
(translates to a combination of a conspiracy thinker and a nutter), although he would refuse to be
called a “wappie”. He is just “investigating everything”. Based on figures and so-called independent
numbers from the internet in general and social media in particular, he claims that COVID isn’t so
bad, all the measures against COVID are far too strong and that the vaccine is dangerous and
unnecessary. Hang on, numbers independent from what!?

Obviously, anyone can pick some numbers from the internet to back whatever claim, and that would just
be an endless yes/no discussion (him nor me are experts in pandemics). Less obvious but truly
upsetting is what I would call “selective distrust”. See, he is a real climate activist, so I asked:
Why would you believe a scientist who says the poles are melting, and why wouldn’t you believe a
scientist who says we need to take the shot to prevent the loss of many fellow humans? We
all live by the same rules of integrity. My friend can’t answer that one!

We publish (see the special issue item and the highlighted article), in peer-reviewed journals. We
discuss results (see the important message from Michel Quintard about InterPore2022), we celebrate
successes (see item about Eduardo) and we learn (see the KC Lecturer, the short courses, the
TeaTimeTalk). We do our best.

And if someone is able to shoot some holes in our line of reasoning, we say: “Don’t worry, we’re
porous media researchers!”

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

InterPore2022: Letter from the president

Dear InterPore friends,

InterPore2022 is eight months away. The plans were to have it in China with a hybrid format;
something we have all been waiting for since the postponement of InterPore2020 in Qingdao due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. We had hoped that progressing vaccination campaigns and an easing of restrictions
would make the situation clear enough to maintain this decision. Unfortunately, this is not quite
the case. Traveling to China remains difficult and it is impossible to know when the situation will
improve.

Under these conditions, it is preferable to consider several options to a hybrid conference in
Qingdao. Of course, a pure online conference is still an option, and our past experiences show that
we are quite successful in this type of organization. However, past online conference surveys show
that many are longing for a return to face-to-face meetings, and we wish to provide participants the
opportunity to gather in person. Since it seems that the European situation has improved enough to
avoid severe travel and gathering restrictions, we are also currently considering organizing
InterPore2022 in a European country with a hybrid format.

Because abstract submission will open Monday, 4 October, we thought it necessary to inform our
members about the potential change in the location. The final decision should come in a few weeks so
that you may decide about your participation at the conference with a full knowledge of the facts.

Michel Quintard
InterPore President

Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecturer 2022

Professor Jacques Huyghe will be the Kimberly-Clark Distinguished
Lecturer for 2022. As such, he will share a topic relevant to the industrial porous media community
through a series of lectures at various member and non-member organizations.

The title of his lecture:
Poromechanics in extremely large deformation: swelling and
fracture

An abstract of the talk and a short biography of Prof. Dr. Huyghe can be found on our website.

Apply now to request to host one of the 2022 InterPore Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecture series at
your institute. Please visit our
website for further information on how to apply.

JEMP2021

26-27 October 2021, Palais Universitaire, Strasbourg or online

JEMP
2021 – French InterPore Conference on Porous Media

This year’s meeting will be hybrid and take place 26-27 October 2021 at Palais Universitaire in
Strasbourg (France) or online.

More information is available on the website and
on the flyer.

Special Issue InterPore 2020-2022

A number of special issues have been created from minisymposia of InterPore2020. Moreover, a number
of special issues related to minisymposia of InterPore2022 are already initiated. We’ll report when
special issues become available online and raise awareness of opportunities for presenting your work
during InterPore2022 and publish it in the corresponding special issue.

Applied
geochemistry in porous media: Interplay of chemical reactions, physical alteration, and flow
phenomena

Edited by Mehdi Gharasoo, Liwei Zhang, Hang Deng

Underground resources exploitation, waste disposal and environmental remediation operations including
oil and gas production, geologic CO2 storage, methane hydrate production, geothermal energy
production, groundwater management, contaminant migration in soil, require in-depth understanding of
complicated flow, transport, physical alteration, and geochemical processes in porous media.
Powerful tools for porous media imaging have been developed to study the aforementioned processes,
and a special issue has been created related to the topics covered by MS 10: Advances in imaging
porous media: techniques, software and case studies at InterPore 2022.

This special issue will have a virtual special issue (VSI) publication format. In this format, papers
will be published immediately once they are available online, instead of staying in “article in
press” status. Each of the online paper will be assigned to the next available regular issue for
publication. Simultaneously, all papers will be virtually grouped together on ScienceDirect, which
is easy to navigate.

Online publications:

• Anna Varzina et
  al. A new concept for pore-scale precipitation-dissolution modelling in a lattice Boltzmann
  framework – Application to portlandite carbonation
• Qin et al. The
  impact of mineral reactive surface area variation on simulated mineral reactions and
  reaction rates
• Zhu et al. An
  advection-diffusion-mechanical deformation integral model to predict coal matrix methane
  permeability combining digital rock physics with laboratory measurements
• Wang et al.
  Evidence of self-sealing in wellbore cement under geologic CO2 storage conditions by
  micro-computed tomography (CT), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Raman
  observations
• Muniruzzaman et
  al. Weathering of unsaturated waste rocks from Kevitsa and Hitura mines: Pilot-scale
  lysimeter experiments and reactive transport modeling
• Kruiswijk et al.
  Reactive transport modelling of push-pull tests: A versatile approach to quantify aquifer
  reactivity
• Xia et al. A
  fractal-based approach to evaluate the effect of microstructure on the permeability of
  two-dimensional porous media
• Sadeghnejad et al.
  Digital rock physics, chemistry, and biology: challenges and prospects of pore-scale
  modelling approach
• Wood. Deriving
  coal fractal dimensions from low-pressure nitrogen adsorption isotherms applying an
  integrated method
• Xiong et al.
  Constraining fluid-rock interactions during eogenetic karst and their impacts on carbonate
  reservoirs: Insights from reactive transport modeling

Recorded short courses available

The InterPore Academy is offering the possibility to follow recorded short courses given previously.
If you scroll down on the InterPore Academy
webpage, you will find a list of available short courses as well as the corresponding
registration process.

The list of available courses can be found here.

Funding opportunities for short courses

If you’re interested in an online short course, but you lack funding, please have a look at this
flyer. We are pleased that InterPore Foundation for Porous Media Science and Technology (InterPore Foundation)
will provide grants for participation of graduate and PhD students in selected InterPore Academy
online short courses.

More
info…

Upcoming InterPore Academy short courses

A new course by Hadi Hajibeygi has been scheduled for December and is entitled
“Multiscale Modeling and Simulation: Scalable Simulation of Nonlinear Coupled Processes in
Heterogeneous Fractured Porous Media”. Meanwhile, the short course by Holger Steeb
has been rescheduled to January (exact dates will follow). Registration is open for the courses by
Majid Hassanizadeh (11-15 October) and Rainer Helmig (8-11 November).

All information is conveniently summarized in this
flyer.

You are warmly invited to the next Porous Media Tea Time Talks (#PorousMediaTTT) session 25 on 5
October 2021 at 15:00 CEST via live stream on our YouTube
Channel.

The PorousMediaTTT team:

Marcel Moura (PoreLab, UiO), Kamalijt Singh (HW), Catherine Spurin (Stanford), Maja Ruecker
(TU/e), Arjen Mascini (UGhent), Nara Brandão (UFU), Javier Santos (UTexas), Mohammad Nooraiepour
(UiO)

Call for Award Nominees

The deadline to nominate candidates for the InterPore Awards is 1
November. You can nominate candidates for the following awards:

• Honorary Lifetime Membership Award
• Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lectureship Award
• InterPore Medal for Porous Media Research
• InterPore Award for Porous Media Research
• InterPore-PoreLab Award for Young Researchers
• Rien van Genuchten Early-Career Award of Porous Media for a Green World

Practical details can be found on the
website.

Eduardo Abreu receives Award

Congratulations to Dr. Eduardo
Abreu, Chair of the Brazilian InterPore Chapter & invited speaker of InterPore2022, for
being awarded the 2021 Zeferino Vaz Academic Recognition Award for excellence & academic
achievements in the area of applied mathematics. Eduardo is Associate Professor of Applied &
Computational Mathematics at Unicamp in the Institute of Mathematics, Statistics
and Scientific Computing (IMECC).

The award is named after Professor Zeferino Vaz, founder of University of Campinas
(Unicamp). Unicamp consists of 10 institutes and 14 schools and is also home to 22
interdisciplinary centers. The Zeferino Vaz Academic Recognition Award is awarded annually to active
professors who have distinguished themselves in their teaching and research roles.

Call for Abstracts: Workshop SITRAM21

8-10 December, INRA Paris, France

Workshop SITRAM21: Advances in the SImulation of reactive flow and TRAnsport in porous Media.

The goal of the workshop is to present recent advances in both modeling and simulation for coupled
transport and geochemistry in subsurface flow. Topics of interest include:

• Reactive multi-phase flow; Impact of reactions on mechanics (changes on porosity or
  permeability)
• Discontinuous kinetic reactions
• Numerical methods for coupling flow, transport and reactions.
• HPC issues.

A special session of the workshop will be dedicated to the presentation of preliminary results on a
new benchmark targeted towards two-phase flow with reactive transport in porous media.

Due to the pandemic conditions, the workshop will be held in a hybrid format, with both on-site and
remote presentations. For more information, please visit the website.

Deadline for abstract submission: 24 November 2021
Contact: Brahim Amaziane and Michel Kern.

Predicting
Characteristics of the Water Cycle From Scaling Relationships

A. G. Hunt, B. Faybishenko, B. Ghanbarian

A theory of the water cycle, based on the hypothesis that ecosystems that best convert atmospheric
carbon to biomass will dominate for given climate and substrate, has been expanded to address both
water- and energy-limited catchments. The predictions generate the observed limits on ET across the
spectrum of climates using observed or theoretical values of plant root fractal dimensionality.
Given that the hypothesis of evolutionary selection is consistent also with paleo-climatic data – in
particular, the cooling of Earth with a warming sun, as well as the extreme non-equilibrium of the
Earth’s atmosphere – it removes impetus for considering the strong Gaia hypothesis.

Water
Resources Research 57 (2021)
Corresponding Authors: Allen G. Hunt

InterPore Members, do you want to promote your publication to the community? If so, please submit
your highlight to newsletter@InterPore.org.
Clearly indicate which of the authors is an InterPore member (or the institute with an
Institutional Membership). Note that we will not review the entries nor does
InterPore endorse the published work. Furthermore, we publish on a “submitted first, published
first” basis. The highlighted publication should be no older than 6 months (available
online).

The highlight should be short (max 100 words) and contain an illustration.
Please note that we offer this opportunity exclusively to InterPore members. If you would like
to become a member, please have a look here.

• PostDoc,
  Assessment of oxygen reactivity in underground bio-methane storage by multiphase reactive
  transport modeling. MINES ParisTech, France

If you have a job opening in your institute and would like to promote it internationally, please
send the description and weblink or PDF to newsletter@interpore.org, and we’ll be happy to
add it to the list.