CAREER: Multiscale Bacterial Transport in Porous Media

职业：多孔介质中的多尺度细菌传输

• 批准号: 2340501
• 负责人: Nuris Figueroa-Morales
• 金额: $ 54万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-03-01 至 2029-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2340501&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Multiscale; Bacterial; Transport; Porous

Controlling bacterial transport in soils could help prevent the spread of pathogens in groundwater, contribute to sustainable agriculture by acting on the soil microbiome, and help clean up environmental pollutants. However, existing knowledge of the interactions between the bacteria and the surrounding fluids and surfaces is insufficient to explain their transport even in simple confining structures. This award will bridge existing limitations by quantifying bacterial transport from microscopic pores to distances in the scale of meters and modeling their motion by accounting for the interactions between the bacteria and the complex flow landscape. The research will inform our future ability to predict and tune bacterial transport by engineering porous media and controlling water flow. The project includes an integrated education program using the topics of microscopes, soil microbiome, and water to increase representation in STEM and educate graduate students for success. The plan will bring hands-on activities and public science talks to cultivate interest in science in families. These activities will be offered in English and Spanish in schools and public places in underserved communities. To create a quantitative understanding to predict and control the transport of bacteria in soils, this project will experimentally and computationally explore how particle and pore-scale physical interactions, bacterial activity, and chemical gradients affect the transport of swimming bacteria across scales in porous media. The project will: (1) quantify for the first time fundamental magnitudes of transport, like the distances and times covered by bacteria upstream and downstream across scales in simple geometries, using unique equipment built for this purpose; (2) develop a computational description that accounts for the solvent’s fluctuating velocity field under high confinement; and (3) quantify and model the transport across scales in complex porous media as a function of the flow, statistical properties of the medium, and the effect of chemoattractants. Results from this research can contribute to designing and optimizing biofiltration systems for pollution control and wastewater treatment, and it could inform new ways of separating bacteria, impacting industries like biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and biofuels.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

控制土壤中的细菌运输有助于防止地下水中病原体的传播，通过作用于土壤微生物组促进可持续农业，并有助于清理环境污染物。然而，现有的关于细菌与周围流体和表面之间相互作用的知识不足以解释它们的运输，即使在简单的限制结构中也是如此。该奖项将通过量化细菌从微观孔隙到米级距离的运输，并通过考虑细菌与复杂流动景观之间的相互作用来模拟细菌的运动，从而弥补现有的限制。这项研究将为我们未来通过设计多孔介质和控制水流来预测和调整细菌运输的能力提供信息。该项目包括一个综合教育计划，以显微镜、土壤微生物组和水为主题，以增加 STEM 的代表性并教育研究生取得成功。该计划将举办实践活动和公共科学讲座，以培养家庭对科学的兴趣。这些活动将在服务欠缺社区的学校和公共场所以英语和西班牙语进行。为了建立定量的理解来预测和控制细菌在土壤中的运输，该项目将通过实验和计算探索颗粒和孔隙尺度的物理相互作用、细菌活性和化学梯度如何影响游动细菌在多孔介质中跨尺度的运输。该项目将：（1）使用为此目的建造的独特设备，首次量化传输的基本量值，例如细菌在简单几何尺度上上游和下游所覆盖的距离和时间； (2) 开发一种计算描述来解释高约束下溶剂的脉动速度场； (3) 对复杂多孔介质中跨尺度的传输进行量化和建模，作为流量、介质统计特性和化学引诱剂效果的函数。这项研究的结果有助于设计和优化用于污染控制和废水处理的生物过滤系统，并且可以提供分离细菌的新方法，从而影响生物技术、制药和生物燃料等行业。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。