Dear InterPore colleagues,

We read many papers and reports to stay on top of things. Most are quickly forgotten (good papers, but not relevant for my research), from some I make notes for future reference, and occasionally, one sticks out like a tree in the meadows. The report from Martin Wagner on 16,000 plastic chemicals is to me such a report. It urges for action, and, for scientists, it generates curiosity. How fast can these plastic chemicals diffuse out of plastics? How do these plastic chemicals disperse across the environmental compartments? (The Advection Diffusion Equation for air flow, groundwater flow, etc., through porous media). Typical InterPore questions! And the final question: how harmful is it to the environment and to us?

Well, it’s not something we can solve overnight. And so, in the meantime, we might as well read the Newsletter. Call for abstracts, the West Africa InterPore Chapter meeting, KC lectureship report, scientific paper, indexing by Google Scholar, an SDG pin, and the transition from InterPore2024 to InterPore2025…

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

Reflections on the Annual Meeting by Karsten Thompson

Dear InterPore Members and Friends:

The 2024 InterPore Annual Conference is now in the books, which is a benchmark for the organization as our first conference in China. From my perspective, it was a big success. In important ways it was the same as past InterPore conferences, with excellent technical and networking opportunities, but it also had plenty of local flavor provided by our hosts (literally and figuratively) and was very unique in that way.

A special thanks to the Local Organizing Committee (LOC), who persevered through two pandemic-postponed events, and ensured that the 2024 conference lived up to the original expectations. LOC chairs Jun Yao and Yongfei Yang, in particular, were there continuously, attending to details both large and small. They guided a large committee as well as a squad of brightly outfitted student volunteers who were ready to help at every opportunity. To our official hosts, as well as to all of the InterPore members from China who were unofficial hosts: your hospitality was amazing and was very much appreciated by all of us from abroad – thank you!

I also need to recognize the InterPore staff, who interface with the LOC for every conference, and who are responsible for both the visible and behind-the-scenes logistics. Karolin and Amy were visible because they were onsite. But Sandra, Laura, Margaret, and Kristy were also providing essential support while six time zones away. Together, they handled the typical challenges as well as new challenges ranging from financial transactions to internet firewalls successfully. On behalf of all of InterPore, thank you to our excellent staff!

A fun surprise for many attendees was to see the first issues of the InterPore Journal, which we made available in printed form at the InterPore booth. The standard distribution mode is electronic open access, so if you were not at the conference or missed the printed version, check it out here. Please consider publishing one of your next papers in this venue to help the journal grow into one of the major pillars of InterPore.

Looking ahead: InterPore2025 will be held 19-22 May in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Plan to participate for what is sure to be another outstanding technical conference and a chance to spend time in the historic district of this culturally rich city in the American West. Also, look for an upcoming announcement on the location of the 2026 meeting, and an upcoming call for proposals (from the Americas) to host the 2027 meeting.

Have a safe and healthy summer, and be sure to take advantage of all the InterPore programming and opportunities that will occur between now and next May.

Best regards,
Karsten Thompson
InterPore President

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Kimberley-Clark Lectureship report

Prof. Ruben Juanes, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, is the Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecturer of 2024. He continues to present his lectures in universities and organisations all over the world.

One of his most recent lectures took place at the University of Minnesota, USA. He was appeared at Princeton University, USA, on 2 June.

His next scheduled presentations are at: University of Rennes, France (18 June); Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse, France (20 June); McMaster University, Canada (26 September). After that, he will travel back to Europe in December for a series of lectures in the Netherlands and Belgium, including: Shell Global Solutions International B.V., University of Twente, Hasselt University and Ghent University.

Now that InterPore2024 has officially wrapped, our sights are set on Albuquerque! The conference website is up and running; check in regularly and tune-in to future newsletters to keep apprised of what’s in store. First up – plenary and invited lecturers! The Program Committee has confirmed 4 plenary and 8 invited lecturers who will provide interesting talks on a wide range of topics. Their research backgrounds include multiple facets of porous media studies including hydrogeochemistry, food microtechnology & process engineering, biomimetic membranes and more.

Chapter News

West Africa InterPore Chapter Meeting

The West Africa InterPore Chapter (WAIC) is planning its second symposium in hybrid format from 27-28 July 2024. This symposium aims to address the pressing challenges associated with clay applications, mining activities in Africa, particularly the critical issue of mining waste management.

Please check the WAIC webpage for more details soon.

SDG pin for Nima Shokri

A long-standing supporter of InterPore, Professor Nima Shokri received the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pin from Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala, the Rector of United Nations University and the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. Congratulations on this great honour! Read more about the pin and the work behind it from Nima’s LinkedIn post.

Call for abstracts: EPoMM

18-19 September 2024, Bath, UK

Welcome you to the historic and picturesque city of Bath, for the 1st Conference on Engineering Porous Materials at Multiple Scales (EPoMM), which aims to bring together researchers from across the diverse field of porous materials and foster collaboration across their many applications and length-scales of study. The ultimate aim is to promote the cross-fertilisation of ideas, methodologies, and potential applications, while showcasing the numerous advances in fields related to renewable energy, gas-separation processes, catalysis, water purification, electronics, and healthcare and others.

Abstracts for oral and poster applications are welcome until 30 June. More information on sending us an abstract and on the conference itself may be found on the website.

Latest Updates

For those of you that missed it, the inaugural issue of our society journal was published online on 26 April. Printed copies were distributed to participants at the recent InterPore Conference in Qingdao. Moving forward, each April issue of the InterPore Journal will be printed and distributed at our annual conferences.

In addition to this milestone, we have obtained our ISSN (unique identification number for the journal), and have registered with CrossRef and received our DOI prefix, allowing us to assign a DOI to each published article, as well as retroactively to all previously published articles.

Another milestone which we have reached is that Google Scholar has indexed our site, and articles published by the InterPore Journal are now included in their search results. This inclusion greatly enhances the discoverability and academic impact of our published research.

Our next major goal is to have the journal indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). We can begin the application process once we have published 10 research articles. Additionally, after at least one year of publication, we will apply for inclusion in the Web of Science Core Collection, starting with the Emerging Sources Citation Index. This step is crucial for eventually obtaining an impact factor, a process that will take at least three years.

The Editorial Office is also exploring other indexing options for our journal. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to share them with the Managing Editor at Laura.Lenz@InterPore.org.

Asymmetric aerosol volume transmission: A computational approach toward infection prevention efficiency of face masks

Matthijs de Winter, Frank M. Verhoeven, Lucie Vermeulen, Erwin Duizer, Alvin Bartels, Ana Maria de Roda Husman, Jack Schijven

Are face masks effective against virus transmission? Yes, says lab testing, but field observations say maybe. We noticed extremely low permeability values of face mask materials and so used Darcy to calculate that ~100% of the inhaled and exhaled air goes around the mask. However, essentially, Stokes number comes to the rescue, as aerosols containing most of the virus particles are not able to follow the air flow around the mask. So, yes, face masks work, but in a different way. Comments or questions welcome by email or below the LinkedIn post.

Physics of Fluids 36, 051902 (2024)
Corresponding Author: Matthijs de Winter

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