Professor David Mays has recently published a series of six papers, coauthored with collaborators from CU Anschutz and CU Boulder and supported by the Hydrologic Sciences Program at the U.S. National Science Foundation, that have recently been featured in the monthly newsletter of the International Society of Porous Media (InterPore) Bringing together researchers from the diverse fields working in porous media—solids containing pores through which fluids flow—InterPore’s tagline is “similar solutions for diverse problems.” The text of the InterPore newsletter item follows:

“We started with an idea from chaos theory: Stretching and folding optimizes plume spreading in laminar flows. This idea prompted a series of simulations and experiments (with some novel methods and wall effect mitigation) showing how engineered injection and extraction (EIE) can be used to create hydraulic building blocks that drive plume spreading beyond the constraints of porous media heterogeneity. Along the way, we derived how injection and extraction triggers mixing at multiple scales and recorded experimental evidence of reversible hydrodynamic dispersion. We conclude that, although it does not always generate chaos, EIE offers a strategy to improve plume spreading.”