Dear InterPore colleagues,

As
Europe braces itself for another grim winter with COVID-19, I recalled a graph I had
seen in summer 2020 in a Nature
news feature by Megan
Scudellari. It got me
worried back then, and today I realize it is even worse than this graph (although the mortality rate
is greatly reduced by the vaccines). The graphs also show that the world’s complexity is hard to
capture in a model and
the scientific community can move forward fast.

Both points are applicable to our porous media community. Innovative papers have been published,
including a special issue in honor of our InterPore President Michel Quintard. I am sure this work
will be shared during our InterPore2022 meeting (please consider submitting an abstract, too). A
number of InterPore chapters have had their meetings and have reported back. And although it is with
regret that we had to say goodbye to Meghan McCarroll, it is a pleasure to announce a new staff
member replacing her (see below).

Like time, we inevitably move forward.

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore
News

Abstract
submission is open!

Find out more about the mini-symposia here.

Call for Exhibitors & Sponsors

We are finalizing the detailed prospectus for potential exhibitors and sponsors at InterPore2022 and
will be sending it out to our existing industry connections soon. Do you know of a company who
should be on our list? Let us know! Perhaps it’s one you regularly work with; maybe it’s one you’d
like to work with. We’d love to hear your ideas. Email
us with the organization name and contact information.

Conference Grants

We are pleased to announce that the InterPore Foundation for Porous Media Science and Technology (InterPore
Foundation)
would once again like to offer a number of conference grants to scientists from academic
institutions from countries with lower- or middle-income economies, as defined by the World
Bank, and to
graduate students.

In addition to paying the conference registration fees, the InterPore Foundation will provide up to
€500 per recipient to go towards travel costs.

Visit the InterPore2022
website for more information on requirements and the application process.

Look here
(18 KB)
for more details regarding the application requirements.

Invited speaker:

Zuleima
T. Karpyn
from Pennsylvania State University will present a talk entitled Experimental
Investigation of
Conditions Favoring Enhanced Gas Storage in Shales.

Zuleima Karpyn is Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Research, and Donohue Family Professor
in
Energy and Mineral Engineering, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, at the Pennsylvania State
University. Dr. Karpyn specializes in multiphase flow and transport in porous media, and digital
rock physics.

Shale gas reservoirs are currently viewed as an emergent opportunity to sustain growing energy needs
while reducing the carbon intensity of energy systems relative to other fossil fuels. This lecture
presents gas invasion experiments which were conducted in conjunction with X-ray microCT imaging on
three different shales: Bakken, Haynesville and Marcellus. Results show evidence of enhanced storage
capacity in all cases, with different degrees of gas densification across the three shale specimens.
Additional characterization of shale composition and pore structure are discussed in order to assess
the shale properties favoring enhanced gas storage. The findings in this work lay a foundation to
evaluate enhanced storage capacity for various gases in ranging tight formations.

For more info, please visit our website.

Staff
changes

For personal reasons, Meghan
McCarroll has resigned from her position
at InterPore. She joined InterPore in 2020 and contributed in many ways to multiple InterPore
operations including membership management, sponsor and exhibitor activities, website maintenance
and IT issues, and the promotion and administration of InterPore conferences – to name but a few of
her responsibilities and contributions. Her services to InterPore have been essential and we deeply
thank her for her dedication and service. We wish her the best in the coming years.

InterPore relies so much on its dedicated staff; so we are glad to announce that Stéphanie
Lantin has been joined to assume Meghan’s role. We warmly welcome her to the InterPore
family and we all look forward to working with her.

InterPore
office and Michel Quintard, InterPore President

My
name is Stéphanie Lantin, and I am pleased to introduce myself as the newest member
of the Executive Team.

I was born in Guadeloupe, a small French department located in the Caribbean. I have studied in
Paris
and graduated with a Bachelor in Business Management and a Master in International Human Resources.
I have always loved to discover new cultures and had the pleasure to do so by living in Ireland,
USA, and Switzerland. Working as a Project Manager in the translation industry also gave me the
opportunity to work with international teams.

I have been living with my family in Stuttgart, Germany, for the past three years and am currently
in
the process of taking over the duties of the Customer Relation Officer. I look forward to working
with InterPore.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me. I can be reached at stef.lantin@interpore.com.

Respectfully,
Stéphanie
Lantin

Special
Issue in honor of Michel Quintard

In
mid-2021, a Special Issue of Advances in Water Resources entitled Recent
developments in upscaling and characterization of flow and transport in porous
media“ was published. The special issue aims to collect original research papers
focused on advances in upscaling and characterization of transport phenomena in porous media over a
wide variety of applications.

It was made in the honor of Michel Quintard and was an initiative of the French InterPore Chapter,
following a workshop organized in Bordeaux on 15-16 April 2019 by the FIC. The special issue is
edited by Didier Lasseux, Francisco Valdés-Parada, and Brian Wood.

National
Chapter News

Invitation

01
December 2021, Bergen, Norway

InterPore Norway is providing a platform for the Norwegian porous media researchers/scientists to
come together and exchange ideas. For this reason, InterPore Norway arranges an annual workshop for
all that are interested in porous media research and technology.

The workshop, hosted by NORCE Norwegian Research Centre and the University of Bergen, is free of
charge and open to all. It will be an in-person event only.

More information about the program and registration can be found here.

Invitation

26
November 2021, online

Taking into consideration that the InterPore National Chapter Committee attributed the 2021 Chapter
Award to the Mexican InterPore Chapter (CMI), we want to invite you to our virtual
meeting on 26 November 2021 at 8:00 am
CST to celebrate this recognition and three presentations by young researchers. Please find the
program for this meeting here
(26 KB).

We are looking forward to seeing you in the above virtual event.

Sincerely,

CMI Steering Committee

Report Saudi Chapter meeting

The KAUST Workshop on Porous Media and 1st InterPore Saudi Chapter Annual Meeting was successfully
held in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia from 8-10 November.
More than 60 attendees joined our conference in person from various institutions and companies all
around Saudi Arabia, including KAUST, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Mineral (KFUPM), Saudi
Aramco, King Khalid University (KKU), and many others. Additionally, more than 60 attendees joined
our conference virtually via Zoom from all around the world. We invited a representative from
InterPore Headquarters, Prof. Majid Hassanizadeh, and representatives from other national chapters,
including Prof. Moran Wang and Prof. Yongfei Yang, to join our meeting. The meeting is fully
sponsored by KAUST, and the organizing committee is chaired by Prof. Shuyu Sun, founding President
of the Saudi Chapter.

The full report can be found here
(964 KB) and the book with the program and abstracts can be found here
(1.4 MB).

Report Spanish Chapter meeting

The annual meeting of the Spanish InterPore Chapter was held at Technical University of Valencia
(UPV) on October 16, 2021 with the participation of over 20 researchers from academia and industry.

The annual meeting had a hybrid format allowing participation in-person and online. The meeting was
opened by Jaime Gómez, professor of the UPV and a Board member of the Spanish InterPore Chapter.
Then, the President of the Spanish InterPore Chapter Marco Dentz (IDAEA-CSIC) gave a short
introduction on the mission of InterPore and the national chapter. Finally, the Vice President Juan
J. Hidalgo (IDAEA-CSIC) gave a presentation on the organization of the Spanish Chapter and its
establishment as a non-profit association. He led a roundtable discussion on the creation of a
knowledge-sharing forum and minisymposia for exchanging ideas and expertise.

The opening session was followed by the scientific program that was organized in 3 blocks, with a
total of 3 invited talks of 30 minutes each and 6 contributed presentations of 15 minutes each.

A detailed program can be found here
(221 KB).

Report French Chapter meeting

The French InterPore Conference on Porous Media was successfully held at Le Palais Universitaire de
Strasbourg (France) on 26 and 27 October 2021. For the French community on porous media, federated
by the France InterPore Chapter, this biennial event corresponds to the 15th “Journées d’Etudes des
Milieux Poreux”, initiated in Toulouse in 1993. The meeting attracted 90 in-person and 21 online
participants, mainly from numerous French research institutions, universities and industry,
promoting high multi-disciplinary scientific exchanges. The hybrid format allowed about 50 virtual
supplementary connections, making the conference a great success.

A full report can be found here
(344 KB).

Upcoming InterPore Academy short courses

The upcoming course is given by Hadi Hajibeygi and is entitled Multiscale
Modeling and Simulation: Scalable Simulation of Nonlinear Coupled Processes in Heterogeneous
Fractured Porous Media.

Course dates: 10, 11, 13, 14 and 15 December 2021.

More information can be found in this
flyer (292 KB).

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 (243 KB). 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… (243 KB)

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
(316 KB).

You are warmly invited to the next Porous Media Tea Time Talks (#PorousMediaTTT) session 28 on
November 16, 2021, at 15:00 CET 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)

InterPore
Award Nominations: Last chance!

The deadline to nominate candidates for the InterPore
Awards is quickly approaching.
You can nominate candidates for the following awards until 15
November :

• 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 on how to submit nominations can be found on the
website. Don’t delay!

Wafer-Scale Electroactive Nanoporous Silicon: Large and Fully Reversible Electrochemo-Mechanical
Actuation in Aqueous Electrolytes

Manuel
Brinker and Patrick Huber

Nanoporosity in silicon results in interface-dominated mechanics, fluidics, and photonics that are
often superior to the ones of the bulk material. However, their active control, for example, by
electronic stimuli, is challenging due to the absence of intrinsic piezoelectricity in the base
material. Here, for nanoporous silicon wetted by aqueous electrolytes, electrosorption-induced
mechanical stress generation of up to 600 kPa that is adjustable at will by potential variations of
≈1 V is shown. Laser cantilever bending experiments allow the determination of the capacitive
charge–stress coupling parameter upon ion sorption. The observation of electrochemo-mechanical
actuation in a mainstream semiconductor opens up novel opportunities for on-chip integrated
actuorics at exceptionally low operation voltages.

Advanced
Materials 33, 202105923
(2021)
Corresponding
Author: Patrick
Huber

Comprehensive Insights into the Porosity
of Lithium-Ion Battery Electrodes: A Comparative Study on Positive Electrodes Based on
LiNi0.6Mn0.2Co0.2O2 (NMC622)

Thomas
Beuse, Mathias Fingerle, Christian Wagner, Martin Winter, Markus Börner

Porosity is a key parameter for the battery electrode performance and mechanical properties such as
adhesion and structural electrode integrity during charge/discharge cycling. This study illustrates
the importance of a correlative approach, from simple thickness measurements to tomography and
segmentation, allowed deciphering the true porous electrode structure and to comprehend the
advantages and inaccuracies of each of the analytical techniques. A digital 3D model of
LiNi0.6Mn0.2Co0.2O2 (NMC622)-based positive electrodes was created based on tomography data and
simulations, which allowed the investigation of the complete pore network. The results of the
mercury intrusion experiments in combination with gas physisorption/pycnometry experiments provide
comprehensive insight into the microstructure.

Batteries
2021, 7,
70
Corresponding
Authors: Mathias
Fingerle and Christian
Wagner

Electronic screening using a virtual Thomas–Fermi fluid for predicting wetting and phase transitions
of ionic liquids at metal surfaces

Alexander
Schlaich, Dongliang Jin, Lyderic Bocquet & Benoit Coasne

We present a novel molecular approach which allows for a versatile description of electronic
screening while capturing molecular aspects inherent to molecular fluids in nanoconfined/interfacial
environments. We build on the Thomas–Fermi formalism for electrostatic screening to develop an
effective approach dealing with any imperfect metal between these asymptotes. By applying this
strategy to a nanoconfined ionic liquid, we demonstrate an unprecedented wetting transition upon
switching the confining medium from insulating to metallic. This novel approach provides a powerful
framework to predict the unusual behavior of dipolar and ionic liquids – in particular inside
nanoporous metallic materials or in the vicinity of metallic surfaces, with direct applications for
energy storage and catalysis.

Nature
Materials
(2021)
Corresponding
Author: Benoit
Coasne

InterPore
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indicate which of the authors is an InterPore member (or the institute with an
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