Howard Brenner
Current Research

Physiochemical hydrodynamics is concerned with the movement of colloidal, polymeric and macromolecular bodies through fluids. Animation may be achieved through various physical and chemical mechanisms, including bulk fluid motion, electrokinetic forces and torques, translational and rotational Brownian movements, and external driving forces, typically of gravitational, electric or magnetic origin. Physicochemical phenomena play a pre-eminent role in the statistical-mechanical modeling and interpretation of a host of physical, chemical, engineering-science and biophysical phenomena. Included are various microfluidic chromatographic separation schemes, incorporating the area of so-called "field flow fractionation" (FFF) mechanisms. Additionally, such microscopic hydrodynamic analysis furnishes useful insights into the behavior of complex bulk and interfacial rheological systems, including nonspherical particle suspensions, emulsions and ferrofluids.

Specific areas of research under active development include macrotransport processes (a generalization of G. I. Taylor¼s dispersion theory), chaos theory, aerosol transport and deposition phenomena (modeled as chemical reactions), suspension flow and rheology, particulate removal from surfaces, clean-room technology, multiphase (oil/water) flow through porous media, groundwater contamination by the adsorption of toxic agents onto suspended colloidal particles, chromatographic separation phenomena, the modeling of biochemical reactors, and interfacial transport processes, especially interfacial rheology. The common theme in these research areas lies in the mathematical modeling of these phenomena through geometric and physicochemical idealization of the complex transport processes involved (e.g. by the use of spatially periodic, geometric models of complex porous media).

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