PhD Studentship: Enhancing Mixing and Reaction in Porous Media with Viscoelastic Instabilities

Research theme: Fluids and Environment

We are pleased to offer a full 4 year studentship in support of this PhD that will pay Home tuition fees and provide a tax-free stipend at the standard UKRI rate (£19,237 in 2024/25) to cover living costs. European nationals who hold settled or pre-settled status are eligible for Home fee status are very welcome to apply.

The advert will be withdrawn once the position has been filled so we recommend that you apply early. 

Many industrial processes involve the mixing and reaction of non-Newtonian fluids in complex geometrical configurations. Often in such settings, the geometric confinement or high fluid viscosities suppresses inertial turbulence, and the mixing it promotes. For efficient reactions and good selectivity, good mixing at the molecular level is essential. To enable this, efficient macro-scale mixing is crucial, allowing molecular diffusion at reasonable timescales. However, for viscoelastic fluids (a subset of non-Newtonian fluids), new instabilities can occur, which promote mixing, and recent experimental work has shown the benefits of such instabilities for reaction progress, but much of the complex interplay between viscoelastic instabilities, mixing and reactions is as yet unknown. The use of elastic instabilities to enhance transport properties has enormous potential across various fields, including chemical engineering (e.g., reactive mixing in catalytic reactors), environmental engineering (e.g., groundwater remediation), and biomedical engineering (e.g., drug delivery systems). The broad aim of this project is therefore to study numerically the mixing and dynamics of reacting flows of viscoelastic fluids in complex geometries.

In this project you will develop novel numerical techniques to allow simulations of mixtures of viscoelastic reacting flows in complex geometries. These techniques will be used to conduct simulations in the canonical setting of cylinder arrays as a representative porous geometry. This will allow fundamental investigations into the complex dynamics of reacting viscoelastic flows, and the effects of these dynamics on mixing efficiency, and reaction yield and selectivity.

From this project, you will gain proficiency in Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics, scientific programming, and High-Performance Computing. These skills are highly valued across a wide range of industries. Recent data reveals that Fluid Dynamics generates £14 billion worth of output from over 2,200 firms and employs 45,000 people in the UK.

Eligibility

Applications should have either:

1. a) a First class honours degree, or
2. b) an undergraduate degree at 2:1 or above, and a Masters award at Merit or above

in a discipline directly relevant to the PhD, or equivalent international qualifications.

We strongly recommend contacting the lead supervisor, Dr Jack King, for this project before you apply: jack.king@manchester.ac.uk.

Application deadline: 10/05/2025

How to apply: Apply online via the above ‘Apply’ button.

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