Manuele Romano
BSc and MSc – Chemical Engineering, University of Pisa, 2017.
EngD Research Engineer
Sponsor: EPSRC and Johnson-Matthey, Teesside
School of Chemical Engineering ,University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom
EngD Project Background
Fluid mixing in stirred vessels is widely encountered in the formulated liquids industry, including the formulation of catalytic and battery materials. An important example is washcoats for the manufacture of vehicle emission catalysts.
Fluids of industrial interest are often non-Newtonian and they are usually mixed under the transitional flow regime, where both the viscous and inertial effects are significant. While some well-established correlations are available for the laminar and the turbulent regimes, there is still very little understanding of the mixing in the transitional regime and, therefore, achieving a good scale up of mixing for these systems is challenging.
Current Project Aims
A fundamental understanding of the involved phenomena, the shear rate distributions and the energy dissipation will allow to develop an effective strategy for the scale up of fluid mixing in the transitional regime. Experimental techniques, such as 3D Particle Tracking Velocimetry (3D-PTV) and 2D Particle Image Velocimetry (2D-PIV), together with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling will be used to collect important information both at the macro- and micro-scale.
Other Activities
Outside of work, Manuele is a bass-guitar player and a music producer. He enjoys playing football and beach volley.