Scientist's role in £2m research project

A WARRINGTON scientist is to play a major role in a £2.4 million collaborative research project to investigate how engineering flow systems can help respond to global health, transportation, energy and climate challenges over the next 40 years.
David Emerson works in the computational science and engineering department at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory.
The United Nations estimates that by 2050 four billion people in 48 countries will lack sufficient water.
But 97 percent of the water on the planet is saltwater, and much of the remaining freshwater is frozen in glaciers or the polar ice caps. Technologies for large-scale purification of seawater or other contaminated water to make it drinkable are therefore urgently needed.
The project, led by Professor Jason Reese at the University of Strathclyde and which also includes Dr Duncan Lockerby at the University of Warwick, is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) alongside support worth £720,000 from nine industrial partners which include Jaguar and Land Rover, the Health Protection Agency and EDF.
This multi-disciplinary team will deliver new techniques for simulating fluid dynamics – a critical area of research that is key to innovating in these visionary applications.
Micro and nano scale engineering presents an important opportunity to help meet these pressing challenges. For example, early indications are that membranes of carbon nanotubes have remarkable properties in filtering salt ions and other contaminants from water. Also, controlling the turbulent drag on aircraft and ship hulls, which is a major inefficiency in modern transportation, may be achievable by embedding micro systems or nano structures over the vehicle’s surface.
Using his specialist skills in parallel algorithms and high performance computing, Professor Emerson will work on delivering the project’s underlying scientific methodology and a unique software demonstrator.
He said: “This is a great illustration of the growing importance of computational science in the quest to find solutions to the problems facing the world today as well as being an excellent example of academia and industry working together.”