Multi-scale Exploration of MultiPhase Physics In FlowS (MEMPHIS)

Completed

Fossil Fuels: Oil Gas and Coal(Oil and Gas, Other oil and gas)
Not Energy Related

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Chemical Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Dr OK Matar
Chemical Engineering
Imperial College London

Standard

EPSRC

01 September 2012

31 December 2017

64 months

£4,968,854

Process engineering

London

NC : Engineering

Dr OK Matar, Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London

Dr P Angeli, Chemical Engineering, University College London
Professor B Azzopardi (Dec'd), Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham
Professor GF Hewitt, Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London
Dr CN Markides, Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London
Professor CC Pain, Department of Earth Sciences, Imperial College London
Dr M Simmons, Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham

Project Contact, Procter & Gamble Technical Centres Ltd.
Project Contact, Johnson Matthey Plc
Project Contact, BP Exploration Co Ltd
Project Contact, Chevron Energy Technology Company, USA
Project Contact, AspenTech Ltd
Project Contact, CD adapco Group

This project is an opportunity to harness the synergy between world-leading scientists from four prestigious institutions to create the next generation modelling tools for complex multiphase flows. These flows are central to micro-fluidics, virtually every processing and manufacturing technology, oil-and-gas and nuclear applications, and biomedical applications such as lithotripsy and laser-surgery cavitation. The ability to predict the behaviour of multiphase flows reliably will address a major challenge of tremendous economic, scientific, and societal benefit to the UK. The Programme will achieve this goal by developing a single modelling framework that establishes, for the first time, a transparent linkage between input (models and/or data) and prediction; this will allow systematic error-source identification, and, therefore, directed, optimal, model-driven experimentation, to maximise prediction accuracy. The framework will also feature optimal selection of massively-parallelisable numerical methods, capable of running efficiently on 10^5-10^6 core supercomputers, optimally-adaptive, three-dimensional resolution, and the most sophisticated multi-scale physical models. This framework will offer unprecedented resolution of multi-scale, multiphase phenomena, minimising the reliance on correlations and empiricism. The investigators' synergy, and their long-standing industrial collaborations, will ensure that this Programme will result in a paradigm-shift in multiphase flow research worldwide. We will demonstrate our capabilities in two areas of strategic importance to the UK: by providing insights into novel manufacturing processes, and reliable prediction of multiphase flow regime transitions in the oil-and-gas industry. Our framework will be sufficiently general to address a number of other industrial and environmental global challenges, which we detail herein

24/09/12