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MEAM Seminar: “Surfactants, Colloids, and Electrolytes: Engineering Transport Phenomena for Energy and the Environment”
March 21 at 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Fluid flows and mass transport mediate countless natural and engineered processes, ranging from the spreading of pollutants to carbon capture and water cleaning. In this talk, I will share three examples of my research where fundamental ideas in transport phenomena are applied to inform technologies with direct impact on energy and the environment. First, I will discuss surfactants, chemicals that preferentially adsorb to interfaces between fluids and critically affect their motion. My work has revealed that these substances play a central role in the engineering of coatings aimed at reducing the drag of marine vessels, resulting in the discovery of a physicochemical lengthscale capable of predicting the effectiveness of a given coating. I will also demonstrate how the spontaneous migration of solid particles in chemical gradients — an effect known as diffusiophoresis— can be used to filter microplastics from water without a membrane. I will present results quantifying the efficiency of this separation process, which is a key step towards novel water remediation technologies with enhanced energy and cost efficiency. Finally, I will describe how fluid flows, driven solely by natural evaporation, can dramatically boost the concentration of electrolytes in porous materials. I will illustrate the physics of this process and how it can be leveraged for the extraction of minerals key to the energy transition, such as lithium, from natural brines.
Fernando Temprano-Coleto
Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University
Fernando Temprano-Coleto is a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. He obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2021 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His doctoral work focused on the effects of surfactants on drag-reducing superhydrophobic coatings, for which he was awarded the APS Gallery of Fluid Motion Award, the WAGS/ProQuest Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award and the UCSB Mechanical Engineering Best PhD Thesis Award. At Princeton, Fernando combines theory, experiments and computation to study transport processes relevant in environmental and energy applications, including microplastics separation, evaporative mineral extraction, soil bioremediation and carbon capture.