Dear InterPore colleagues,

I wished my neighbor a very sportive summer, as he would be intensively following the European Championships (soccer), the Tour de France (cycling), the Olympic Games and some more major sporting events. All from the couch… so, I warned him about thrombosis with all that exercise! Got me thinking about fluid dynamics, precipitation, non-Newtonian flow… our expertise is never far away from practical applications.

Our top sport, porous media research, is mostly conducted while sitting, so stretching our legs occasionally is important. The Newsletter Team will will be on a brief summer break and returns 30 August. Meanwhile, we’ve got a very interesting Newsletter for you. Perhaps you can get your email program to read it out loud through your ear pods and listen to the Newsletter while getting some exercise.

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

Call for Minisymposia Proposals

The Program Committee welcomes proposals for new minisymposia (MS) at InterPore2025. MS proposals around the focus theme of “Water” are of special interest. To avoid duplication, we hope to receive proposals for subjects that expand on the topics currently covered by our existing MS.

The deadline for proposals is Monday, 19 August. Please send your proposals to the conference mailing address.

We look forward to seeing you in Albuquerque!

Jaime Gomez-Hernandez
Program Committee Chair

Invited speaker

In anticipation of InterPore2025, we’re introducing the invited speakers in today’s and forthcoming Newsletters and Bulletins. This week: Daniel K. Schwartz

Daniel K. Schwartz
University of Colorado Boulder, USA

Title: Anomalous Transport in Porous Environments due to Energy Barriers, Self-Propulsion and Dynamic Confinement

Dan Schwartz is the Glenn L. Murphy Professor of Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dan’s research interests include the dynamic behavior of molecules and nanoparticles in confined environments. The dynamic behavior of molecules and nanoparticles in confined environments lead to complex and highly-varied phenomena, where heterogeneity may arise from spatial variation of the material/interface itself, from structural configurations, or through inhomogeneous dynamic behavior. To obtain relevant information about these complex dynamics, we have developed highly multiplexed… continue reading

InterPore Elections 2024: Call for Nominations

InterPore Elections are coming up from 1 – 30 November 2024.

As a reminder, all current InterPore members will be eligible to vote during this period.

In the meantime, now is a good time to visit our My InterPore Page to ensure your membership is active for 2024. For any questions, please reach out to us at membership@interpore.org.

Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lectures in 2024

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 organizations all over the world.

His most recent lectures took place at Princeton University, (USA), University of Rennes (France).

His next scheduled presentations are:

• McMaster University, Canada (26 September)
• Technical University of Valencia and 5th Annual meeting and Porous Media Workshop of the Spanish Chapter, Spain (16 November)
• IDAEA-CSIC (Instituto de Diagnóstico Ambiental y Estudios del Agua), Spain (20 November).

Bid Now to Host InterPore2027

The InterPore2027 Call for Bids is now open! The 19th Annual Meeting will be held in the Americas the week of 10 May 2027, and we are looking for a host city! Bids will be accepted from any location in North or South America. Interested parties should submit their bids no later than 01 October 2024. Any questions about the bidding process should be directed to Oleg Iliev.

Don’t Forget to Submit Your Research to InterPore Journal

Dear InterPore Community,

As we approach the end of summer (in the Northern Hemisphere), we’d like to remind you about the opportunity to publish in InterPore Journal:

• No article processing charges for 2024 submissions
• Our second issue is coming soon (expected late summer)
• Your contributions are vital to our journal’s growth

Don’t miss this chance to showcase your work in porous media research! For more information, to see the current issue, or to submit, visit our website.

InterPore Journal Team

Chapter News

29 – 31 Jan 2025, Sydney, Australia The registration for the 4th InterPore Australian Chapter Meeting & 16th International Symposium on Wettability and Porous Media is now open! Register early to benefit from early bird delegate rates. Submissions for poster presentations are still being accepted.

For more information, including a list of invited speakers, please see our website.

The 5th Annual meeting and Porous Media Workshop of the Spanish Chapter will take place in Valencia on 18 November 2024 in the Red Cube of the Polytechnic City of Innovation, Technical University of Valencia. The meeting will cover a broad range of porous media topics and features the invited talk of the Kimberly-Clark lecturer Prof. Ruben Juanes on “Fluids, Fingers, Fractures and Fractals: Patterns in Porous Media”.

Registration will open 12 September. For more information, please check the brochure or visit the Spain InterPore Chapter website.

The second annual meeting and symposium of the West Africa InterPore Chapter (WAIC) was held in virtual format on 27 & 28 July 2024 with the participation of over 20 academic researchers for this second event.

The meeting was opened by Dr Adu SAKYI from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), Chair of the Steering Committee.

The main objective of the event was to foster interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations among researchers, engineers, and industry stakeholders to explore the latest advancements and potential applications of porous media science and engineering in the context of clay applications and mining waste management in Africa. Keynote lectures included:

• Relative permeability hysteresis in underground hydrogen storage – a look at the finer details – Prof. Anozie EBIGBO from Helmut-Schmidt-Universität Hamburg
• Clays applications by Dr Brahima SORGHO, Université Joseph KI-ZERBO (Burkina Faso)
• Thermodynamics of irreversible processes (TIP) approach flow modeling at the porous medium-atmosphere interface by Dr Marcel Bawindsom KEBRE, Université Joseph KI-ZERBO (Burkina Faso)

Read the full report here

Be a leader! Nominate a colleague for an InterPore Award!

Call for nominations for the InterPore Awards, the deadline is 15 November!

InterPore recognizes young and senior scientists for their contributions in the field of porous media research as a sign of appreciation and as a stimulus for more excellent work.

Please nominate a worthy recipient!

More information can be found in this flyer (pdf, 846 kb) and on the website.

Emergence of dissipation and hysteresis from interactions among reversible, non-dissipative units: The case of fluid-fluid interfaces

Holtzman, R., Dentz, M., Moura, M., Chubynsky, M., Planet, R., Ortin, J.

Fluid-fluid displacement is often irreversible—exhibiting hysteresis where reversal of the driving force (e.g. external pressure) does not reverse the fluids’ configuration. This irreversibility is linked to energy dissipation, a key to efficient design of engineering operations such as subsurface cleanup or energy storage. Here, we analyze (analytically, numerically and experimentally) a novel model system that exposes a striking phenomenon: emergence of hysteresis and dissipation in a system made of individually “reversible” (non-hysteretic) entities, due to their spatial interactions mediated by interfacial tension.

Physical Review Fluids, 9(6), 064001 (2024)
Corresponding Author: Ran Holtzman

The Origin of Surface Tension

S. Majid Hassanizadeh

How is surface tension related to molecular properties and the molecular description of materials? The explanations provided in much of the literature are wrong and/or incomplete. Often, surface tension is linked to the forces of cohesion between molecules of a liquid, which is only one of the intermolecular forces in a fluid – a force which is commonly almost negligible within a fluid – but becomes significantly larger in the interfacial region between two fluids. A much stronger intermolecular force is the impulse due to the molecules hitting each other. In this article, we explain the interplay of these forces and show that while they result in a compressive and isotropic state of stress within fluids under equilibrium conditions, their resultant is anisotropic in the interfacial region and results in a less compressive or even tensile force in the tangential direction. It is this pressure deficit that is experienced as surface tension.

InterPore Journal 1(1) (2024)
Corresponding Author: S. Majid Hassanizadeh

Species Richness Net Primary Productivity and the Water Balance Problem

Allen G. Hunt, Muhammad Sahimi, Erica A. Newman

19th Century Naturalists von Humboldt, Darwin, and Wallace were struck by the remarkable species richness of the tropics. We show that species energy theory explains the variability of plant, and particularly tree, species around the world if our existing result for net primary productivity, NPP, is used for species number prediction. The result confirms the relevance also of the prescription for finding the water balance given in the Eagleson Report’ “Opportunities in the Hydrologic Sciences,” on page 65-66, which the authors inadvertently followed in developing a solution of the water balance using ecological optimality (maximizing carbon assimilation, or NPP, with respect to the hydrologic fluxes). In the past year, results of this optimization have been shown to make accurate predictions of the change of streamflow with climate, net primary productivity, and species richness.

Entropy 2024, 26, 641
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.

PhD

• PhD Candidate in Thermodynamics of ammonia-water mixtures. Department of Chemistry, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway

Post-doc

• Postdoctoral Fellow in Thermodynamics and Porous Media Science. Department of Chemistry, NTNU, Trondheim, 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. It is also possible to post the position on the InterPore website. Log in through MyInterPore and click “Submit A Job Opening.”