Dear InterPore colleagues,

Those of you who’ve been following InterPore and reading this Newsletter for years will recognize the annual trends. One is the reoccurring call for award nominees. This particular award is a great opportunity for young scientists. Make sure that the rising star in your group is on the list!

The other trend is the series of updates and announcements of the next annual InterPore meeting. Today’s announcement of the invited speaker coincidently relates to the award call. Quite an obvious connection, if you look at it.

Lots of chapter news and updates, the very exciting InterPore Academy Study Plan is revealed and available positions. Please be advised that some of the submission and application deadlines are this weekend or early next week.

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

InterPore2024 Invited Speaker

Alex Hansen
NTNU-UiO Porous Media Labratory
Norway

Hansen has been the director of the PoreLab since 2017. PoreLab is a center of excellence funded by the Research Council of Norway and shared between the NTNU and the University of Oslo. Hansen’s main research interests concern the intersection between fluid dynamics and statistical mechanics in porous media.

Abstract:

Homogenization is the standard approach to upscaling immiscible two-phase flow in porous media from the pore scale to the Darcy scale. The trouble with homogenization techniques is that they can only produce averages of existing variables and not new types of variables. Statistical mechanics does produce new types of variables, but demands equilibrium. Immiscible two-phase flow in porous media is not an equilibrium process.

It is, however, possible to map immiscible two-phase flow in porous media onto an equivalent equilibrium process through a trick. This makes it possible to formulate a version of statistical mechanics for this problem.

This leads to… read the full abstract here.

Seaside Walk & Light Show

InterPore2024 participants will be able to join us for a walk to the Qingdao seashore where we will see famous attractions such as the May Fourth Square, the Olympic Sailing Center, Lover Dam and Yeer Island. The two-hour seaside stroll will culminate with a spectacular light show featuring a variety of elements such as multimedia lighting, music, and even fireworks, which tell the story of Qingdao’s history and culture.

Photo: 長安城根喚朱雀, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia Commons

Dear InterPore Members,

We are all very excited that we now have our own society journal, which is available for all to freely read and contribute to! We also plan on having our very first issue ready to publish in December 2023 / January 2024. This is an invitation to all, both members and non-members alike, to submit your work for this first issue as well as the ones that follow. In doing so, you will also be providing your valuable support for this journal and its future success!

Keep in mind that in addition to original research papers, we are also interested in submissions for other article types, including technical notes, review articles, open datasets and source codes, letters to the editor, short communications, as well as commentaries and opinion pieces. You can find out more on the various article types here.

Information on the submission process as well as author instructions can be found here, and you can go straight to the submissions website here.

Please also take a moment to complete this short poll here and let us know when we can look forward to your submissions.

Best regards,
Nima Shokri, Editor-in-Chief, InterPore Journal
Laura Lenz, Managing Editor, InterPore Journal

Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecturer 2024

Prof. Ruben Juanes
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Prof. Juanes is Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Ruben Juanes is a world-renowned expert in the field of multiphase flow in porous media. His research aims at advancing fundamental understanding and predictive capabilities of the simultaneous flow of two or more fluids through rocks, soils, and other porous materials. It combines theory, simulation, and experiments, to elucidate fundamental aspects of multiphase flow.

Find out about his two lecture options (“Fluids, Fingers, Fractures and Fractals: Patterns in Porous Media” and “Man-made Earthquakes and the Energy Transition”)

How to host Ruben Juanes at your institute
Please visit our website for further information on how to apply.

Chapter News

France InterPore Chapter Meeting

The 16th edition of JEMP (Journées d’Etudes des Milieux Poreux) – the InterPore France Chapter conference on porous media – will be held at IFP Energie nouvelles, Rueil-Malmaison (near Paris) from 17 to 19 October 2023.

The discussions, mostly interdisciplinary, involve fundamental topics such as applied mathematics, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, and process engineering. The scientific research carried out in these domains is relevant in several major areas related to environmental and societal needs: energy storage, pollution abatement, renewable energies, agri-food and health.

The deadline to take advantage of Early Bird rates and apply for the Thesis Award is 15 September.

Click here for more details.

WAIC Chapter Meeting

Abstract submission deadline 15 September

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.

Report on the 6th Brazil InterPore Chapter Conference

The 6th Brazil Interpore Chapter Conference on Porous Media occurred from 7-9 August 2023, at the Sirius laboratory, in Campinas – SP – Brazil. Sirius is a fourth-generation Brazilian synchrotron laboratory, and it was the conference venue for the first time. Sirius is part of the National Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS), one of the national laboratories of the National Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM). There were 104 participants, with representatives from all Brazilian regions (North, Northwest, South, and Southwest), as well as eighteen from outside Brazil. The conference attracted many students, post-docs and young researchers and foster interaction with senior researchers and professors from academia and industry.

The conference brought 12 plenary speakers, 18 oral presentation and 23 posters covering a variety of porous media areas: synchrotron; theory, modeling, numerical methods; energy and industrial application; green world; biotechnology; oil science and microfluidic and smart materials. Read the full report here.

Report on the 4th China InterPore Chapter Conference

The 17th National Conference on Fluid Dynamics in Porous Media was successfully held in Beijing Sinopec Conference Center from 17-20 August. The conference was organized by the Chinese Society of Mechanics and hosted by China University of Petroleum (Beijing). InterPore China Chaptero-organized this conference. InterPore China chapter honorary chair Jun Ya), chair Moran Wang, general secretary Yongfei Yang and general secretary Ke Xu served as the conference’s vice chairs.

More than 500 scholars participated this conference. Read the full report here.

The ISC is pleased to share the 2023 call for nominations to the ISC Fellowship.

ISC Fellows are individuals of high scientific and public standing who serve as experts for the ISC’s governance, scientific initiatives and partnerships, and support the ISC in its mission to be the global voice for science by amplifying this voice through ambassadorial and advisory roles.

Nominations can be submitted until 15 October by completing the online form.

Please note that nominations remain valid for three years, therefore, nominations submitted in 2022 will be reconsidered for future intakes, and do not need to be resubmitted.

First Course of the IP Academy Study Plan in Porous Media

13 November to 4 December

PORE 1-1 Fundamentals of porous media structure and characterization

Mark your calendars!

Join lecturers Ryan Armstrong (UNSW Sydney, Australia), Martin J. Blunt (Imperial College, UK), Maša Prodanović (University of Texas Austin, USA), and Catherine Spurin (Stanford University, USA) as they explore the imaging of porous media and image processing, quantification of pore-scale images, single phase transport, and multiphase flow.

Please note, these renowned experts will be joining from across the globe. Therefore, lecture times will vary weekly to accommodate time zone changes. Recordings will be made available for participants that are unable to attend live.

Please visit our Academy Courses website for more details.

Free Upcoming Webinar with Inga Berre on 10 October

Join us on 10 October at 4 pm CEST for a free webinar with Inga Berre, University of Bergen entitled “Modeling of flow and deformation in fractured formations.”

Fractures are mechanical breaks implying material discontinuity across surfaces or narrow zones in a formation. These have a strong impact on flow, deformation, and transport processes. The structural impact the fractures have on the processes, as well as the highly coupled nature of the dynamics, leads to challenges in the development of simulation models.

Motivated by processes caused by both injection and production and natural convection in geothermal systems, this webinar will provide an introduction to modeling of coupled subsurface processes in fractured formations. A focus will be on the interplay between shear and tensile fracture deformation, deformation of the porous medium surrounding the fractures and fluid flow and heat transfer. Numerical examples will illustrate the concepts for processes related to injection and production operations in geothermal reservoirs and related to natural hydrothermal convection in the roots of hydrothermal systems.

Click here for more information and Zoom details.

Call for 2024 InterPore PoreLab Award for Young Researchers Nominations

The InterPore PoreLab Award for Young Researchers is given to a young researcher in recognition of outstanding contributions in the field of porous media from a fundamental point of view. The research may be theoretical, computational, or experimental.

The awardee will receive a grant of 1,000€ towards participation at InterPore2024 and will be offered to spend up to 60 days with the PoreLab in Norway.

Details on the requirements and nomination process can be found on our website.

Nomination deadline is 01 November 2023. Please nominate a worthy recipient!

InterPore Members, do you want to promote your publication to the community? If so, please submit your highlight to newsletter@InterPore.org. 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 (500 characters) 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

• PhD position on large-scale underground hydrogen storage in karst aquifers. Ghent University, Belgium

Post-doc

• Postdoctoral Position on Physics of water transfers in bio-based materials. Laboratoire Navier, Univ. Gustave Eiffel campus, Champs sur Marne, 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.