A new faculty member in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Houston's Cullen College of Engineering has received a six-figure grant from the National Science Foundation for collaborative research into oscillating flow and heat transfer in porous media.
Ben Xu, an Assistant Professor and Presidential Frontier Faculty Fellow, received the award in March for his proposal, “Collaborative Research: Multiscale study of oscillating flow and multiphase heat transfer in porous media.” As the leading PI in this collaborative campaign, the $171,734 grant will cover research at UH through August 2025.
“This is my first standard NSF grant, and it will expand my research in multiphase transport phenomenon in advanced energy systems. This project will provide an insight in the fundamental understanding of multiphase transport process in porous media under oscillating flow conditions, and the findings will greatly improve the design of porous structures in a variety of energy applications, including thermal storage in concentrated solar power plants, carbon retention in rock structures, fuel cells, and hydrogen production,” Xu said.
According to the grant's abstract, several state-of-the-art energy technologies central to energy generation and storage require complicated flow and heat transfer through porous media, yet these flow and heat transfer mechanisms are not well understood when combining with multiphase and oscillating process. The proposed research attempts to experimentally study oscillating and multiphase flows in porous media, and then develop a numerical approach that can be used to gain further insight into the fundamental behavior, thereby improving energy efficiency, and lowering both economic costs and environmental impacts.
“This research will combine experimental and numerical techniques to describe the effects of the physical porous structure, the flow/heat transfer boundary layer and the variations in wettability from materials and manufacturing process,” the proposal states. “Naturally-occurring and engineered porous media will be scanned, analyzed and catalogued in a database, and an experimental platform will also be designed and developed to study in situ oscillating and multiphase transport phenomena inside porous media using the Neutron Imaging Facility at Oak Ridge National Lab.”
“The experimental work will be coupled with numerical simulations through parallel development of a multiphase discrete Boltzmann method model and a hybrid discrete/lattice Boltzmann method model that captures kinetic behaviors and multiscale interactions.” Xu said.
The grant is under the umbrella of the NSF's collaborative research efforts. In addition to Xu, the other researchers that have received this grant include:
- Leitao Chen, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at Tennessee State University ($132,601)
- Laura Schaefer, Burton J. and Ann M. McMurtry Chair in Engineering and Professor and Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Rice University ($141,442)
Xu started at the University of Houston in January 2023. He has three doctoral students – Shuqi Zhou, Mathew Farias and Lichang Zhu – but his lab has more openings for researchers. Farias also recently published a paper on the Journal of Manufacturing Processes. For more information on the openings and Xu's lab, visit Multiphase Transport Lab (MTL).