Dear InterPore colleagues,

I am still shocked by the relentless aggression of the Russian army leaders against Ukrainian men, woman and children. It is unacceptable by any human standards, regardless of your place of birth. I am glad InterPore made a strong statement against the war earlier this week as many other science societies have also done (e.g. Academia Europia).

We play a role as scientists to make this world a better place for everyone. Our role is serious and enjoyable, both coming together at InterPore2022. This is also shown in the awards presented today, scientific contributions and the research spotlights, as well as the InterPore Academy events.

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

CO2 sequestration

Can we count on CO2 sequestration in our ambition to reduce the global amounts of atmospheric greenhouse gas? At least three invited speakers and many other presenters will address all related issues during InterPore2022. Find out more on CO2 sequestration at InterPore2022 in our flyer.

Visiting UAE

The culture of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is rich in its heritage and has a diverse and multicultural society. Please visit this link for information about the capital city of Abu Dhabi. This includes places to visit, things to do and see, attractions, and events to discover in Abu Dhabi.

Information about COVID-19 in the UAE

For the status of COVID-19 and the updated regulations in the UAE, please check the information here and here.

InterPore2022 sponsor & partner events

Please have a look at our website for an update of the list with sponsors and partner events.

InterPore2022 sponsors

InterPore is proud to announce the renewed Platinum Sponsorship of Kimberly-Clark at InterPore2022!

Huggies®. Kleenex®. Andrex®. Scott®. Kotex®. Poise®. Depend®. For 150 years, our brands have been brought to market by a team of purpose-led innovators dedicated to creating Better Care for a Better World. And it takes the right people—in the right jobs and the right place—to make that happen. Our 46,000+ employees are changing the world for the better and generously giving back to communities and causes around the globe.

Do you want your company name in our online communication? Please ask Amy Spang for more information or find our prospectus on our website.

Webinar series CS3

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano is organizing a webinar series called CS3 on a 4-month schedule. The next one is approaching and will be held on 8 March 2022 on the topic “Underground space: from resources to structures and infrastructures”. Participation is open for everybody and free of charge.

For more information, please visit our website.

You are warmly invited to session 32 of the “Porous Media Tea Time Talks” webinar series, featuring Koondanibha Mitra (Radboud University, The Netherlands) and Stephan B. Lunowa (Hasselt University, Belgium). The #PorousMediaTTT will be streamed live on 15 March at 15:00 CET via our YouTube Channel.

InterPore Honorary Lifetime Membership Award

The InterPore Honorary Lifetime Membership Award is reserved for individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to porous media science and technology, who are world-renowned in the porous media community, and whose contributions are consistent with the aims and ideals of InterPore.

We are pleased to announce that the Honorary Lifetime Membership Award 2022 goes to Professor Signe Kjelstrup, Principal Investigator of PoreLab Center of Excellence, Norway. The committee writes:

She has made extraordinary contributions in applying the methods of non-equilibrium thermodynamics based on energy conservation, entropy production and local thermal equilibrium to describe multiphase flow in porous media. Her outstanding work in equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics is widely known, not only from her many scientific papers, but also from a series of books, including a book for engineering students, “Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics for Engineers”. Prof. Kjelstrup has widely applied novel scientific ideas in porous media science, from hydrogen-based fuel cell technology to the transport of nano-sized medication particles in the blood stream and the minimization of heat loss of reindeer and seal noses in winter. She is a principal investigator in PoreLab Center of Excellence at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, where she has overseen graduate education and delivered a generation of researchers and engineers within the fields of equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics and porous media.

InterPore Medal for Porous Media Research

The InterPore Medal for Porous Media Research is given to scientists with an established career, in recognition of excellent research in general porous media, with emphasis on research conducted over the past 10 years. This years winner is Dr. Masa Prodanović.

The award committee writes: “Dr. Prodanović has made truly outstanding contributions to the porous media community, in particular in the areas of modeling multiphase interfaces in porous and fractured media; multiscale characterization and modeling of microporosity in carbonates, salt and unconventional reservoirs; and modeling of transport of particulate suspensions and ferrofluids. She is a prolific researcher and has co-authored 69 refereed journal papers, 42 conference papers, one book, two book chapters, and 22 datasets. Dr. Prodanović is a cyberinfrastructure pioneer; she is maintaining an open and easy-to-use repository called Digital Rocks Portal (DRP). The platform allows visual organization images such as 3D/4D x-ray microtomography and focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy and related experimental measurements of different porous materials, remote visualization through the web browser, basic image analysis and referencing them via digital object identifiers (DOIs).”

Research Spotlight: SFB1313

SFB 1313 is an international and interdisciplinary Collaborative Research Centre of the University of Stuttgart (Germany), entitled “Interface-Driven Multi-Field Processes in Porous Media – Flow, Transport and Deformation“. SFB 1313 is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and consists of four major project areas: free flow and porous-media flow (A), Fracture propagation and fluid flow (B), Fluid-solid phase change (C), Benchmarks, computing, and visualization (D). The projects are supported by a project for “Research Data Management and Research Software Engineering”, by a public relations manager and its “Porous Media Lab” for in-situ experiments. In total, about 60 researchers of 9 different institutes of the University of Stuttgart and of about 35 partner universities and research institutions build the SFB 1313 team.

The full Research Spotlight can be found here.

Research Spotlight: PProGRess

Ghent University’s Pore-scale Processes in Geomaterials Research group (PProGRess) studies the various physical, chemical and biological processes that occur inside porous geomaterials. Our group belongs to the Department of Geology and specializes in non-destructive imaging of the 3D structure of porous materials, from nano- to macro-scale. As part of the Ghent University Centre for X-Ray Tomography (UGCT), we are closely involved in methodological work on improving real-time micro-CT imaging, in terms of both temporal and spatial resolution as its application to challenging in-situ experiments.

PProGRess was originally mainly active in the field of building materials (e.g. natural stone) and the assessment of their properties. Over the last few years, the application area of our research has expanded to include contaminant hydrogeology, subsurface energy storage, geological carbon storage, mineral (ore) characterization, industrial porous media and more. The group is led by Prof. Veerle Cnudde, and currently consists of 20 members, including 12 PhD students.

The full Research Spotlight can be found here.

The Research Spotlight series highlights the work of InterPore Members. Short scientific texts with illustrations give an overview of a sampling of the current projects or group contributions in various fields of porous media research. If your institution or organization is an InterPore Member, and you would like to contribute a Research Spotlight, please contact Stef Lantin.

Vapor-sorption Coupled Diffusion in Cellulose Fiber Pile Revealed by Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Xiaoyan Ma, Benjamin Maillet, Laurent Brochard, Olivier Pitois, Rahima Sidi-Boulenouar, and Philippe Coussot

Moisture transport or storage in fabrics plays a major role on the comfort or discomfort of clothes or the efficiency of masks. Thanks to unique experiments with an original MRI technique the complete information on the bound water (absorbed in the solid structure) distribution in time was obtained during the drying of a model textile, i.e. a cellulose fiber pile. We then show that these evolutions can be exactly predicted, without any parameter fitting, by a model assuming continuous local sorption equilibrum inside the material. These results open the way to the prediction of wetness and heat transfer properties of fabrics under any conditions, and the improvement of hygrothermal models for bio-based construction materials.

Phys. Rev. Applied 17, 024048
Corresponding Authors: Philippe Coussot

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.

• PhD position, Modelling cracks in porous materials, University of Padova, Italy, with secondments at ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne
• PhD Research Fellow, Experimental Reservoir Physics, Centre for Sustainable Subsurface Resources / Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, Norway
• PhD position, Applied and Computational Mathematics, Centre for Sustainable Subsurface Resources, Department of Mathematics, University of Bergen, Norway

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.