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The Set­tling of Por­ous Particles in Wa­ter

The Max Planck So­ci­ety sup­ports a sci­entific col­lab­or­a­tion between the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy and the Mas­sachus­sets In­sti­tute of Tech­no­logy, MIT.
 
The Max Planck So­ci­ety (MPS) sup­ports a sci­entific col­lab­or­a­tion between the Biogeo­chem­istry De­part­ment of the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy in Bre­men and the Civil En­gin­eer­ing De­part­ment of Mas­sachu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­no­logy (MIT), on study­ing the `Settling behavior of porous particles in stratified oceans'. The aim of the pro­ject is the pre­dic­tion of the set­tling times of por­ous particles and thus their role in car­bon ex­port and thin layer form­a­tion. The Math­em­at­ical Mod­el­ing Group of the MPI will per­form the mod­el­ing part, whereas the ex­per­i­mental stud­ies will be car­ried out jointly with MIT.
The eco­logy and biogeo­chem­istry of the ocean are strongly in­flu­enced by particle set­tling, as particles are the main vec­tor of car­bon ex­port from the up­per ocean to­wards the ocean floor. The lat­ter mech­an­ics rep­res­ents a key com­pon­ent of the ocean car­bon cycle

Most mar­ine particles are highly por­ous res­ult­ing in pe­cu­liar fluid dy­nam­ical be­ha­vior that in­flu­ences the set­tling pro­cess con­sid­er­ably, in par­tic­u­lar at dens­ity in­ter­faces (pycno­clines). At pycno­clines, it is found that the particle set­tling speed is dra­mat­ic­ally re­duced. This res­ults in en­hanced op­por­tun­it­ies for mar­ine mi­croor­gan­isms to at­tach to particles, as well as in the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of particles and the form­a­tion of thin lay­ers. These lay­ers are ubi­quit­ous in the ocean, and are be­lieved to play a sig­ni­fic­ant eco­lo­gical role, host­ing loc­al­ized eco­sys­tems where abund­ance and growth of or­gan­isms are en­hanced.

"Des­pite the im­port­ance of these re­gions, we are still in the dark as to the un­der­ly­ing fluid mech­an­ics of their form­a­tion, for which the set­tling dy­nam­ics of in­di­vidual particles is a fun­da­mental com­pon­ent", says Prof. Khalili from MPI. In the col­lab­or­a­tion pro­ject between the Math­em­at­ical Mod­el­ing Group and MIT, they are go­ing to study math­em­at­ic­ally and ex­per­i­ment­ally the set­tling be­ha­vior of ag­greg­ates in a dens­ity-strat­i­fied am­bi­ent.

The pro­ject is sup­por­ted by the Max Planck So­ci­ety (MPS) for 3 years.




Addendum:
At present, there is an open­ing for a postdoc stu­dent
to work par­tially at MIT and par­tially at MPI-Bre­men.

Highly qual­i­fied ex­per­i­mental phys­i­cists or mech­an­ical en­gin­eers with ex­cel­lent ex­per­i­ence in non-in­vas­ive visu­al­iz­a­tion meth­ods (PIV, PTV, PLIF) are in­vited to con­tact
Prof. Ar­zhang Khalili. akhalilimpi-bre­men.de
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