Dear InterPore colleagues,

The Dutch news is overflowing with global weather reports. Heat waves across the Mediterranean with horrible wildfires. Same for large swaths of North America, with coral reefs dying in warm waters. Record high temperatures on Southeast Asia. Extreme rainfall in the north of Italy. Coincidently, Allen Hunt wrote a paper on global precipitation elasticity (see InJournals section). I am curious whether these extreme weather conditions fit in his model.

It is late, but maybe not too late, say climate scientists. So, we look ahead to see what can be done. Collaboration is key, and the first annual meeting of the West Africa InterPore Chapter is a great example of new collaborations starting. As well as, of course, InterPore2024 in Qingdao.

This, and much more in today’s newsletter. We’ll be back on 28 August after the summer break. Meanwhile, at the North Sea beach, I’ll probably use the tide to illustrate climate-change-driven sea level rise to my kids. And play the unconsolidated sand(castle) versus a Newtonian fluid with suspended particulates…

Have a good one!

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

Virus and Phishing E-mail Warning

As previously reported, some members of the InterPore community have informed us about emails apparently from InterPore with dubious content and/or requests. These phishing emails typically exploit the fact that emails from a familiar person are regarded often as more safe and one would be tempted to open it or reply. A recent phishing email claiming to be from an InterPore contact in the following format has been circulated:

Dear [name]

How are you doing today?. Please, I need your assistance for the InterPore. Get back to me by email so I can explain further.

Please pay extra attention, confirm the email address matches with the supposed sender, and think twice before opening any attachments – even if the sender/sender email is familiar.

After a successful 15th Annual Meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, it is already time to turn our sights to Qingdao, China in 2024.

It has been a long road to Qingdao! Originally planned to be the location of InterPore2020, and with preparations already under way, we were forced to organize the conference online due to the pandemic. The plans to meet in China for InterPore2022 were also postponed due to travel restrictions. Preparations are now underway for InterPore2024, the 16th Annual InterPore Meeting to be held 13-16 May 2024. The Local Organizing Committee from China University of Petroleum is excited to welcome you in Qingdao in t the Shangri-La Hotel next year!

For our planning purposes, we urge you to complete this poll. We recognize that your situation may be uncertain, but indicating your current preference will greatly assist us as we prepare for the event. We thank you in advance for your help.

Results from the InterPore Conferences Childcare Survey

We would like to extend our thank you to everyone who participated in our Childcare Survey, created by InterPore in order to determine whether offering a childcare option during our conferences is a viable and necessary measure.

According to the responses we received, it is clear that the interest for more family-friendly conferences is a reality. The great majority has had to make the decision to not participate in a conference due to lack of childcare services, and would like to take advantage of such an option.

The certification of the childcare provider, access to family-friendly facilities (conference site and hotels), and the oppportunity to meet and network with other working caregivers, are amongst the top priorities chosen by our survey participants.

InterPore and the InterPore Foundation will take this data into serious consideration for future conferences being planned.

Help get InterPore Journal off to a good start!

Now that the official society journal, InterPore Journal, has launched, we need your support to help make this journal the main destination for high-quality research on porous media science and technology!

How can you contribute?

First, you can submit your next paper to the InterPore Journal. Contributions linked to a porous media application with a geological, industrial, environmental, or biological nature are encouraged. Submitted research may include, but is not limited to, physical and numerical modelling, imaging techniques and analysis, theory development, big data analysis, characterization, and/or material design. You can find out more information on the types of articles we plan on publishing here.

Second, you can register yourself as a reviewer here. As a reviewer you not only help validate the work which may be published, you also help improve the quality of the published research for all! Participating in the review process is also an excellent way to gain experience in the publishing process, stay abreast of the latest developments in your subject area (before anyone else), and improve the quality of your own published work.

And lastly, you can spread the word! Share the Journal posts from the InterPore Linkedin and Facebook pages as well as the Twitter account. Tell your colleagues as well.

For more information, please visit our website.

Sharing Knowledge through Wikipore

Share your knowledge with the Porous Media community through WikiPore!

WikiPore is a freely accessible knowledge and an open-collaborative portal on the topic of porous media with unbiased and high-quality contents.

It contains knowledge and latest research findings contributed by the porous media science community, ranging from basic definitions, as in textbooks, to latest research. Moreover, it introduces key and instrumental software and resources used in porous media science which can be beneficial to a wide range of stakeholder groups ranging from academia to industry. WikiPore will contribute toward one of our main missions as provider of valuable knowledge, its dissemination as well as linking community across disciplines and sectors.

WikiPore includes two main sections, i.e. Articles and Software. To submit a contribution to WikiPore, please login to your InterPore account by clicking on “MY INTERPORE” and click either on “Submit WikiPore Article” or “Submit WikiPore Software” to add a new entry.

We are looking forward to reading an article from you on WikiPore!

Chapter News

WIAC annual meeting & symposium

The West Africa InterPore Chapter will hold its annual meeting & symposium on 27-28 October 2023.

For the first edition of its annual meeting, WAIC invites researchers and industry professionals to submit abstracts from now until 15 September. This symposium aims to foster interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations among researchers, engineers, and industry stakeholders to address the pressing challenges associated with mining activities in Africa, particularly the critical issue of mining waste management.

Visit the West Africa InterPore Chapter Meeting & Symposium page to learn more and submit your abstract.

German Chapter Meeting

The next meeting of the German Chapter of InterPore will take place at the KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and will be organized at the Mathematical Institute for Machine Learning and Data Science (MIDS) by the Chair of Geomatics and Geomathematics.

The conference provides a national forum for interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration of experts from numerous German research institutions, universities, and industry. The topics of the conference therefore deal with all issues of porous media research, from experiment to theory and from science to industrial application.

Registration will be open through 3 September.

See here for more information.

Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lectureship in Glasgow

Prof. Adrian Bejan, from Duke University, USA, continues to successfully present his award-winning lecture, Vascular materials: Predicting Design Evolution, at various universities and institutions around the world.

On 12 July, he visited the University of Glasgow, Scotland, where he presented his lecture at the 15th International Green Energy Conference.

His next presentations include the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials, Brazil, on 25 July; the Politectnico di Torino (12 Constructal Law Conference—Freedom, Design and Evolution) in September; and the Journées d’Etude des Milieux Poreux (JEMP2023), France, in October.

We are now receiving requests to host the 2024 InterPore Kimberly-Clark Lecturer, Prof. Ruben Juanes. Please visit our website for further information on how to apply.

Call for abstract: AGU2023

11-15 December 2023, San Francisco, USA

We would like to invite you to the session: NS015. Uncertainty and Risk Management for Underground Hydrogen Storage.

The invited speakers are:

• Maartje Boon (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
• Sam Quan Xie (Curtin University, Australia)

Session description:

Hydrogen is an attractive energy carrier because it can be stored in large-scale (TWh) quantities in subsurface cavern and porous rock formations. Safe storage of hydrogen in the subsurface requires rigorous risk assessments, especially when it is scaled up to megatonne amounts of storage. Mitigation strategies also need to be developed, as safety protocols, when incidents occur. These safety measures need to be built on the past experiences of successful storage of natural gas and CO2. We welcome submissions from various experimental, numerical, and field studies that include 1) structural trapping mechanisms, 2) reservoir performance, 3) reservoir and wellbore integrity, leakage potential, and induced seismicity, 4) microbiology and geochemistry purity assessments, 5) assessment of cryogenic, transportation, and toxicity hazards, 6) techno-economics of storage, especially through a system look integrated with natural gas and CO2 storage, 7) price volatility, operational costs, regulatory and market risks, and 8) socio-political aspects of hydrogen storage.

We look forward to connecting with you at AGU in San Francisco!

Take care,

Mayukh Talukdar,
on behalf of the NS015 conveners.

Submission deadline: 2 August 2023.
Submit here: Follow this link

Predicting Streamflow Elasticity Based on Percolation Theory and Ecological Optimality

A.G. Hunt, M. Sahimi, B. Ghanbarian

The ecological optimality principle applied was to exploit root-soil network interactions in such a way that partitions soil water (the water balance) into that combination of evapotranspiration and run-off that maximizes the net primary productivity of the plant ecosystem. The theoretical basis thus lies in the percolation theoretical descriptions of root growth and soil formation. The results describe the known variability of streamflow elasticity as a function of aridity index in global data bases using exactly the same range of storage values that generate the known variation in the water balance itself and also describe the dependence of streamflow elasticity on streamflow itself. As noted in the publication, the ecosystem level optimization of carbon assimilation on which this publication is based (WRR, 2021) yields essentially the same result for the water balance as a dynamic process model optimized for carbon profit, published in 2022, providing additional support for the proposed linkage to ecological optima.

AGU Advances 4, 4 (2023)
Corresponding Author: Allen G. Hunt

InterPore Members can promote their publications to the community via the InterPore InJournals Section of the Newsletter. If you wish to do so, please submit your publication 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.

Other

• 2 Research Associate positions in the field of Condensation and mass transport in porous structures. Institute of Aerospace Thermodynamics, Unversität Stuttgart, Germany

PhD

• PhD position on the physics of solute transport in brain micro-vascular networks. CNRS, Rennes, France
• Two PhD positions in mining geotechnics. Effect of climate change on geomechanical behavior of tailings. Polytechnique Montréal, Canada

Post-doc

• Researcher positions (2) in reservoir simulation for subsurface resources, NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, 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.