Porous Transport
Why it matters
Capillary flow through porous media underlies wicks in heat pipes, fuel cell and electrolyzer layers, battery electrodes, filtration, soil remediation, and oil recovery. In all of these, the balance between viscous, capillary, and gravitational forces decides whether a liquid spreads evenly or fingers through a few preferred paths. Usually that balance is fixed once the material is made. We are working on ways to tune it during operation.
Our approach
- Temperature-dependent wettability. We use thermally responsive surfactants whose effect on surface tension and contact angle changes with temperature. A modest temperature change then moves the system between flow regimes (for example, from capillary fingering to stable displacement).
- Pore-scale modeling. We develop computational models that resolve individual pores and interfaces. These models predict how surfactant transport, local temperature, and wettability together determine the macroscopic flow pattern.
- Visualization. Optical microscopy of model porous networks provides direct validation data.
Selected outcomes
- A Computational Model for Pore-Scale Flow Regime Tuning with Thermally Responsive Surfactants, Colloids and Surfaces A (2026)
- An Experimental Study of Interfacial Dynamics Control Using Temperature-Sensitive Surfactants, Langmuir (2026), cover article (see Oil-Water Interfacial Dynamics)
- “Leveraging Temperature-dependent Wettability to Control Flow in Porous Media”, ASTFE (2025)
- Invited talk, “Controlling capillary flow in porous media”, Hokkaido University, Japan (2025)
This thrust is led by PhD candidate Amirhosein Sarchami, recipient of the Dean’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship.
Broader relevance
Actively controlling wetting and capillary transport is useful in any process that has to move, spread, or remove liquid from a structured surface. Examples include wicking structures for thermal management, electrochemical devices, and wet processing and drying of patterned surfaces.