Second Internation Conference on Porous Media and its Applications in Science, Engineering and Industry

University Of California-Riverside, Riverside CA

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT National Science Foundation Proposal Number: CTS-0616554 Principal Investigator: Vafai, Kambiz Affiliation: University of California-Riverside Proposal Title: Second International Conference on Porous Media and its Applications in Science, Engineering, and Industry This award will provide partial funding for the Second International Conference on Porous Media and its Applications in Science, Engineering, and Industry scheduled for June 18-22, 2007 in Kauai, Hawaii. The first Conference on Porous Media and its Applications in Science, Engineering and Industry was held in 1996 in Kona, Hawaii. It was partly supported by NSF and was attended by an international contingent of researchers working in the porous media field. The upcoming conference, to be held in Kauai, Hawaii on June 18-22, 2007, will build on the Kona conference with emphasis on currently active areas. The conference has significant Intellectual Merit because porous media flow and transport occur in a wide range of applications in contemporary technology and is a topic with many unanswered questions. These applications include, but are not restricted to, areas such as geothermal engineering, building thermal insulation, chemical catalytic reactors, packed cryogenic microsphere insulation, petroleum reservoirs, direct contact heat exchangers, coal combustors, nuclear waste repositories, heat pipe technology, and bio transport. Packed beds of particulate solids have applications in chemical and metallurgical engineering involving such systems as catalytic and chromatographic reactors, packed absorption and distillation towers, ion exchange columns, packed filters, pebble-type heat exchanger, petroleum reservoirs, and geothermal reservoirs. The conference will emphasize emerging areas such as biotransport in porous media. The funds from NSF will broadly impact the U.S. technical community because they will be utilized primarily to offset the travel costs for US participants. About 40% of the project funds will go to young faculty and graduate students, with the balance going to more senior invited speakers and committee members. The conference outcomes will be broadly disseminated by including papers and keynotes in conference proceedings, and publishing some of the outstanding papers from the conference in a special issue of the Journal of Porous Media.