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.

控制土壤中的细菌传输可以帮助防止病原体在地下水中的传播，通过对土壤微生物组作用，从而促进可持续的一致性，并有助于清理环境污染物。然而，现有的了解细菌与周围流体和表面之间的相互作用也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。该奖项将通过量化从微观毛孔到仪表尺度的距离的细菌传输来弥合现有的局限性，并通过考虑细菌与复杂流动景观之间的相互作用来对其运动进行建模。这项研究将为我们未来通过工程多孔培养基和控制水流来预测和调整细菌传输的能力。该项目包括使用显微镜，土壤微生物组和水的主题的综合教育计划，以增加STEM和教育研究生的代表性，以取得成功。该计划将带来动手活动和公共科学谈判，以培养对家庭科学的兴趣。这些活动将在服务不足社区的英语和西班牙学校以及公共场所提供。为了建立定量的理解来预测和控制土壤中细菌的运输，该项目将在实验和计算上探索粒子和孔隙尺度的物理相互作用，细菌活性以及化学梯度如何影响多孔培养基中游泳细菌跨尺度的运输。该项目将：（1）首次量化运输的基本幅度，例如使用为此目的建造的独特设备，以简单的几何形式上游和下游的细菌覆盖的距离和时间； （2）开发一个计算描述，该描述说明了在高限制下解决方案波动速度场的波动； （3）对复杂多孔介质中跨尺度的传输进行量化和模拟，这是流动，介质的统计特性以及趋化因素的效果的函数。这项研究的结果可以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，并且可以为分离细菌，影响生物技术，药品和生物燃料等行业的新方法提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过评估了CRCRITAIL MERITAIL MERITAIL MERITAIL和BRODITIAL和BRODITIAL和BRODITIAL和BRODITAIL和BRODITAILATIAL和BRODITIAL和BRODITAILATIAL和BRODITAILATIA奖。