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Welcome
The Hrenya Research
Group investigates a variety of complex fluids,
such as gas-solid systems, granular materials, and
aerosols. Our work is fundamental in nature and is
applied to a wide range of applications: improving
the efficiency gasifiers used for energy
production, developing novel heat transfer methods
for concentrating solar power plants, mitigating
the ejection of lunar soil upon spacecraft
landing, and predicting the agglomeration of
cohesive particles found in nature or industry. We
use a combination of theory, computation, and
experiments to probe these systems.
2017 Hrenya Research Group
(L-R): Casey, Ignacio (visiting faculty from the
University of Madrid), Aaron, Peiyuan, Ipsita,
Christine, Steven, Kevin, William, Haley, Lucas
Recent Group
News...
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Prof.
Christine M. Hrenya is the recipient of
the AIChE 2020 Shell Thomas Baron Award in
Fluid-Particle Systems, an award that
recognizes a researcher who has made a
significant impact in the fluid particle
systems field or related subjects.
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Prof.
Christine M. Hrenya delivered the
Jacobus van 't Hoff lecture for the TU
Delft Process Technology Institute on
September 17, 2020. The
presentation was titled "Learning from
the unexpected: Surprising behaviors in
particulate systems." Learn
more here. |
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Prof.
Christine Hrenya receives $750,000
grant sponsored by the U.S. Exascaling
Computing Project. Read more
here. |
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Dr.
William Fullmer is the recipient of
the 2018 American Institute of
Chemists Postdoc Award, presented by
the Department of Chemical Engineering
in recognition of his excellence in
research, academics, and service while
at CU. His
2017 paper in the Annual Review
of Fluid Mechanics was
also recognized by the Web of Science
as a “highly cited paper” – i.e.,
citation count in top 1% of
Physics papers published in 2017.
William has recently started a
position at the Department of Energy
National Energy Technology Laboratory.
Congratulations, William, on these
well-deserved recognitions! |
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Professor
Christine Hrenya was recently
awarded $3M in US
DOE funding for Phase-II of the
ongoing MFiX-DEM enhancement project.
This project is a collaboration with
Professor Thomas Hauser of CU's Research
Computing, Dr. Ray Grout of the National
Energy Technology Laboratory and Dr. Ray
Cocco of Particulate Solid Research,
Inc. Congratulations Christine and
the rest of the MFiX-DEM team! |
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In
early Dec. 2016 Drs. Peiyuan Liu and
William Fullmer got to tour CU Research
Computing's new supercomputer Summit,
scheduled to replace Janus in early
2017. |
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| Congratulations
to Professor Christine Hrenya for
chairing a successful AIChE Annual
Meeting in San Francisco. In between
hosting special and award sessions,
Christine presented at a special session
celebrating Prof. Sundaresan (above) and
gave a plenary lecture. Dr. Peiyuan
Liu, Dr. Casey LaMarche, Dr. William
Fullmer, Aaron Lattanzi and Kevin
Kellogg also attended and presented
recent research results. |
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Congratulations
to recent Hrenya Group Alumnus Dr. Professor Aaron
Morris who will be joining the faculty
in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue
University beginning Jan 2017. Purdue's
ME department is currently ranked in the
top ten - both undergrad and grad programs
- by the US News & World
Reports. Congrats Aaron! |
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The Hrenya
Group branched out to several
conferences and seminars this summer.
Prof. Christine Hrenya presented a
plenary lecture on clustering at
the triennial International
Conference on Multiphase Flow in Firenze
(Italy), presented on cohesive granular
matter at the Granular Matter Gordon
Research Conference at Stonehill College
(outside of Boston), and attended the
EPIC (Enabling Process Innovation
through Computation) workshop at
the Banff International Research
Station. Dr. Peiyuan Liu traveled to
Morgantown, WV to attend NETL's Workshop
on Multiphase Flow Science and
present on recent progress of the MFiX
enhancement project. Aaron Lattanzi gave
a short talk and presented an associated
poster on a CFD-DEM heat transfer
boundary condition at the 24e Congrès
international de mécanique théorique et
appliquée à
Montréal.
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Congratulations
to recent Hrenya Group Alumnus Dr. Peter
Mitrano on his new Instructor position
at Colorado Mesa University in the Dept.
of Mechanical Engineering. Congrats
Pete! |
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Professor
Christine Hrenya was recently featured
in an ASCR
Discovery article highlighting
her contributions to the SunShot
Initiative. Nice work Christine &
Hrenya Group members Dr. Aaron Morris,
Aaron Lattanzi and Ben Grote. |
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The
group after a long, hard day of
trail breaking in the Indian Peaks
Wilderness for the 2016 summer
Hrenya Group Volunteer Day.
Hopefully we will return next summer
to enjoy our hard work with a jaunt
from Brainard Lake on a completed
trail.
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| Hrenya Group 2016 Graduates: Dr. Kyle
Berger & Ben Grote |
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Congratulations
to Ben Grote for winning the 2016
Donald Mackinson Student Writing
Award on research
performed in the Hrenya Group. Ben plans
to use the award money to finance some
backpacking trips this summer. Great
job, Ben!
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Congratulations
to Dr. Kyle Berger for successfully
defending his PhD thesis on lunar
regolith erosion. We wish him luck at
his new position at Practical
Scientific Solutions in North
Carolina. |
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Professor
Christine Hrenya has been appointed
as an Associate Editor for
the AIChE Journal, one of the most
important academic journals in the
broad field of Chemical Engineering.
Congratulations to our advisor on
such a tremendous accomplishment!
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The Hrenya
Group had 7 presentations at the 2015
Annual AIChE Meeting in Salt Lake
City, Utah. Prof. Christine Hrenya and
Drs. Casey LaMarche, Peiyuan Liu,
William Fullmer and Aaron Morris all
presented on current research.
Pictures above show (clockwise from
left): Casey with Prof. John Grace
after presenting at his honorary
session; Peiyuan presenting on
sensitivities of CFD-DEM simulations;
the Utah State Capitol building;
front; and side views of the LDS
Church's Salt Lake Temple.
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For
the 2015 fall semester Hrenya Group
Volunteer Day, the group assisted the
Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks
(OSMP) dept. in constructing a new bee
garden. The pollinator-friendly flowers
planted in the bed will help sustain
native pollinators throughout the entire
season, after agricultural nectar
sources have dwindled. Stop by the South
Teller Trailhead to
check it out.
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Ph.D.
Candidate Kyle Berger spent Summer
2015 at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, CA as part of his NASA
fellowship. He worked with Dr.
Rudranaryan Mukherjee on integrating
collision detection between generic
triangle meshes into an in-house code.
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Hrenya
Group alumni and continued
collaborator Prof. Jia Chew was the
recipient of the 2015
Singapore Youth Award (SYA).
The SYA is Singapore's highest
accolade which honors outstanding
young people who both demonstrate
excellence in their respective field
and contribute to society through
community involvement. Jia's
interview can be viewed here and
her SYA bio is available here.
Congratulations, Jia, on such a
prestigious honor. |
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Prof.
Christine Hrenya and Dr. William
Fullmer paid a visit to
collaborator Prof.
Vicente Garzó at
his home institute, the Universidad
de Extremadura in Badajoz, Spain.
Significant progress was made on a
new kinetic theory and its
associated linear stability analysis
during the two week visit. At
left, the SPhinX
Group treat
Christine and William to lunch in
Portugal. |
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A new
tradition was started in 2015: the
Hrenya Group Volunteer Day.
This past April on Arbor Day,
the group worked with the great
staff at Boulder County Parks and
Open Space to plant trees at Boulder
County Fairgrounds. It was a
rewarding experience to give back to
the community for all of the trails
and open space we enjoy year round.
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Dr.
William Fullmer was invited to
present at the 2015 Japan-US Seminar
on Two-Phase Flow Dynamics. The
conference is sponsored by the NSF
and was hosted at Purdue University
(William's alma mater). His
presentation focused on continuing
gas-solid instability research in
collaboration with Peter Mitrano
(group alumni),
Xiaoqi Li and Xiaolong
Yin (Colorado
School of Mines), and Guodong Liu
(Harbin Institute of Technology). |
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Dr.
Aaron Morris was recently awarded a
2015-2016 grant of 5,000,000 core
hours on Titan,
one of the world's fastest
supercomputers. This
DOE-sponsored award will be used to
simulate a novel, muliphase heat
transfer system for use in
concentrating solar power
plants. This work, being
carried out with collaborators at
ORNL and NREL, is part of U.S.
SunShot Initiative. |
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Dr.
Casey LaMarche was invited to give
an oral presentation of her work
at the 2014 Gordon Research
Conference of Granular and
Granular-Fluid Flow (Easton, Ma).
Her talk, entitled "Critical
Role of Surface Roughness in
Predicting Fluidization of
Cohesive Particles," was part of a
short series of slots designed to
highlight the innovative work of
junior scientists.
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Ben
Grote, an undergraduate researcher
working with Dr. Aaron Morris,
received an award for the poster
he presented at the 2014 Rocky
Mountain Advanced Computing
Consortium (RMACC) High
Performance Computing Conference.
Ben’s research, supported by
the U.S.
SunShot Initiative,
focuses on modeling a novel
heat exchanger that uses solid
grains as the heat transfer fluid.
Congratulations, Ben! |
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A recent
publication by Ph.D.
candidate Peter Mitrano ( Journal
of Fluid Mechanics, 738, R2,
2014) was selected as the focus
article in a JFM Focus
on Fluids piece,
authored by Professor Michel Louge
of Cornell University. Peter's
work shows that kinetic-theory
predictions of clustering
instabilties perform well despite a
violation of their
low-Knudsen-number assumption (see
figure), a surprising results which
bodes well for the widespread
applicability of such models.
This work was also featured
by ACS. |
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Recent
graduate Carly Donahue had her Ph.D.
research on agglomeration among wetted
solids highlighted
in the journal Nature.
As part of this work, Carly put a
unique spin on a common desktop toy,
the Newton’s cradle, by immersing it
in liquid before pulling on the
pendulum. The results were not
what was expected based on our
experience with the toy, but a careful
theoretical analysis helped to tease
out the important physics. Carly
is now performing post-doctoral
research at CalTech. |
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