Hrenya

Hrenya recognized as Fellow of the American Physical Society

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 19:15:23 +0000

Hrenya recognized as Fellow of the American Physical Society Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/17/2021 - 12:15

Jonathan Raab

Professor Christine Hrenya was selected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) this year “for key advancements in the fundamental understanding of granular matter and multiphase systems via a combination of theory, experiments and simulations,” according to the official citation. Fellow selections are an exclusive honor, limited to no more than one half of one percent of APS membership.

Hrenya’s cited research is a fundamental approach to understanding systems involving solid particles including granular matter or multiphase systems via tools including experimentation, simulations and theory. Using a variety of tools in concert has allowed her to gain insights that would be missed by discrete methodology lacking the context of the other approaches.

“Because we are focusing on the physical mechanisms that underpin the behavior of particulate systems rather than a particular unit operation or process, the applications are countless,” Hrenya said of her group’s work. “We have investigated how lunar soil is ejected when a spacecraft lands in order to mitigate the sandblasting of nearby equipment, and also how a common material like sand can be used as a heat exchange ‘fluid’ to improve the efficiency of concentrating solar power plants.”

The Hrenya Research Group focuses on fundamental behavior of solid particles, which is an approach shared by physicists, geophysicists and astrophysicists. Engineers and physicists benefit from each other’s expertise, as training in their respective disciplines has complementary but different emphases.

“Having physicists as collaborators as well as physics-trained students in my group has certainly broadened my horizons and ultimately made my group’s work better,” Hrenya said. “This is what interdisciplinary collaboration is all about: making the outcomes more impactful.”

Hrenya said the honor is particularly meaningful because it comes from an area outside of her formal discipline.

“Since the beginning of my faculty career, I have made it a point to go beyond the chemical engineering community to seek out expertise and understanding from others with different training, particularly physicists,” she said. “It is clear to me that it has shaped the group’s work for the better, and this award attests to that effort.”

Hrenya credited the many group members and research collaborators she has worked with over the course of her career for this recognition.

“I have been so fortunate to have incredibly bright and driven researchers in my group, and they are responsible for the heavy lifting,” she said.

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Hrenya to receive Shell Thomas Baron Award in Fluid-Particle Systems

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 19:07:25 +0000

Hrenya to receive Shell Thomas Baron Award in Fluid-Particle Systems Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/01/2020 - 13:07

Jonathan Raab

Professor Christine Hrenya is the recipient of the AIChE 2020 Shell Thomas Baron Award in Fluid-Particle Systems, an award that recognizes a researcher who has made a significant impact in the fluid particle systems field or related subjects.

“I am honored and humbled to join the past group of recipients—truly an inspiring group of first-rate researchers,” Hrenya said. “Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to have outstanding group members—a driven, curious, enthusiastic and inspiring group of young scientists that is the lifeblood of our work. I often say that my job boils down to asking good questions, and then the group figures out the answers!”

Hrenya also points to collaborators and peers from different universities, national laboratories and industry as having helped shape her career.

“Although solid scientific contributions are possible from individual efforts, working with experts with complementary skills not only speeds up the rate of research, but more importantly, improves its quality as well,” Hrenya said. “It takes a village.”

Professor Sankaran Sundaresan of Princeton led the nomination effort and gathered letters of support from researchers in industry and academia.

“This remarkable depth and breadth of accomplishments make Christine Hrenya a superb candidate for the Thomas Baron Award,” Sundaresan said in the nomination letter. The others cited her unique contributions to modeling particle flows and technology, as well as her contributions to mentoring and teaching.

The award includes a cash prize and a plaque commemorating the achievement. Hrenya will formally receive the award during the virtual AIChE Annual Meeting in November.

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Hrenya to discuss learning from the unexpected via Jacobus van ‘t Hoff lecture on Sept. 17

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 16:24:15 +0000

Hrenya to discuss learning from the unexpected via Jacobus van ‘t Hoff lecture on Sept. 17 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/11/2020 - 10:24

Jonathan Raab

Professor Christine M. Hrenya will deliver the prestigious Jacobus van ’t Hoff lecture for the TU Delft Process Technology Institute on Sept. 17. She joins a cadre of accomplished, notable researchers—including Nobel laureates—who have been honored with the lecture appointment.

“Being chosen to present this distinguished lecture is particularly gratifying since it is not specific to a research area, but it is instead intended to attract a wide audience,” Hrenya said. “It is named after the first Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, and several recent speakers are also Nobel laureates. I am humbled to join the past group of speakers.”

Hrenya’s talk is titled “Learning from the unexpected: Surprising behaviors in particulate systems” and focuses on how some of the most meaningful and impactful findings in her group’s research have often come as a surprise.

“The findings which we may initially doubt because they are contrary to our expectations—the ones we scratch our heads over for seemingly endless hours and also the ones which help us unravel the physical mechanisms giving rise to said observations—are among the most satisfying,” Hrenya said.

“Preparing for this lecture made me reflect on my group’s work over the decades, which is always a good exercise. It helps to identify the strengths of our approach to research and expand on them, while also weeding any inefficiencies.”

The TU Delft Process Technology Institute holds the Jacobus van ’t Hoff Lecture each year, inviting distinguished speakers from the international biochemical and bioprocess community. The ceremony will be virtual for 2020.

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Anton Paar, Hrenya Lab Push Research Boundaries with State-of-the-Art Rheometer

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 15:10:50 +0000

Anton Paar, Hrenya Lab Push Research Boundaries with State-of-the-Art Rheometer Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/27/2017 - 09:10

Anton Paar's lead rheology scientist, Abhi Shetty (second from left), joins Professor Christine Hrenya (right) and graduate students (from left) Noemi Collado, Ipsita Mishra and Kevin Kellogg for the rheometer installation.

University of Colorado Boulder Professor Christine Hrenya has long been an innovator in the field of rheometry, and thanks to Anton Paar’s MCR 502 rheometer, her team can now push research boundaries even further.

The MCR 502 helps measure the mechanical properties of fluids—how they move and bind—including the flows of solid, cohesive particles that Hrenya’s group studies. Anton Paar approached Hrenya about a partnership in which her team would have full use of the MCR 502, and the decision was an easy one.

“This could potentially advance our research timeline by a few years,” Hrenya said.

The tabletop machine will allow Hrenya and her team to study fine particles in a faster, less painstaking way and to examine the behavior of more cohesive particles than they can currently study, Hrenya said. Numerous industries from energy generation to pharmaceutical manufacturing stand to benefit from a better understanding of the phenomena governing particle flow.

In the group’s ground-floor lab, the MCR 502 fluidizes tiny glass spheres so the solid particles look like a bubbling liquid. The particles can be 20 microns wide or smaller, and each micron is one millionth of a meter. For reference, a human hair ranges from approximately 10 to 200 microns.

To kick off the arrangement, Anton Paar’s lead rheology scientist, Abhi Shetty, trained Hrenya and graduate students on use of the rheometer for two days in September.

Shetty shared Hrenya’s enthusiasm for the collaboration.

“Anton Paar’s plan is to invite innovation leaders like Professor Hrenya to work with us in the area of novel powder applications to not only come up with new powder measurement techniques but also drive fundamental understanding of complex powder flow problems,” he said. “The focus here is on actually pushing the boundaries of instrumentation.”

Anton Paar has provided several rheometers to university labs across the nation through its research partnership program. Besides enabling important scientific discovery, the program allows Anton Paar to receive reliable user feedback to improve its precise equipment.

To learn more about Anton Paar’s rheometers or partnership program, contact Norbert Ponweiser at norbert.ponweiser@anton-paar.com or 804-550-1051.

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Christine Hrenya earns $3M DOE grant

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 21:06:40 +0000

Christine Hrenya earns $3M DOE grant Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/02/2016 - 15:06

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $3 million in additional research funding to Professors Christine Hrenya (Chemical and Biological Engineering) and Professor Thomas Hauser (Research Computing) to advance simulation technologies that are being used to develop next-generation energy systems.

The researchers will work to improve the speed, capability and accuracy of a tool called MFiX-DEM, an open-source code used to create computer models that simulate multiphase fluid dynamics.

MFiX-DEM and other tools can reduce the time and cost of commercializing new energy technologies, but the time required for simulations and uncertainties in the predictions hinders industry from using such tools effectively.

Building on earlier research and a $686,000 DOE grant earlier this year, Hrenya and co-PI Hauser will use the funding to develop and conduct a second phase of high-performance computer simulations relevant to industry.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $3 million in additional research funding to Professors Christine Hrenya and Thomas Hauser to advance simulation technologies that are being used to develop next-generation energy systems.

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Christine Hrenya: Predicting Particle Flows

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 17:16:19 +0000

Christine Hrenya: Predicting Particle Flows Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/19/2016 - 10:16

If you have ever poured flour into a bowl and ended up with a thin layer covering your counter, you understand the difficulty of controlling these small cohesive particles.

What if you were trying to transport 500 pounds of flour through small tubing or fluidize it in a reactor?

“Cohesive particles, where van der Waals forces are stronger than those of gravity, can be difficult to move,” says ChBE Professor Christine Hrenya, who has been investigating granular and complex flow problems for decades. “But they are great fun to model.”

Hrenya’s group has been doing just this for a $1.5 million industry-sponsored grant to simulate cohesive particles in fluidized beds. Because low flow velocities can lead to vertical channeling and high velocities can result in entrainment of agglomerates, flow velocities must be optimized. Hrenya has capability to investigate these flows both computationally and experimentally.

“Collaboration with an external experimental group can involve a significant time lag,” says Hrenya. “��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� 5 years into my tenure here at CU, I decided to expand my computational group to include experimentalists. This now allows us to test our models as they are being developed and advance the science much more quickly.”

But what if your particles are less like flour and more like sugar? For instance, Hrenya’s group is also investigating using non-cohesive solid particles as a heat transfer fluid in concentrating solar power (CSP) plants. These granular materials are more stable and efficient at higher temperatures than the salt-based fluids currently employed. Though they sometimes form ribbons due to cluster instabilities, Hrenya’s group believes this may actually be good for heat transfer.

“By using something simple, cheap and readily available we can help make solar energy more competitive,” says Hrenya of these DOE- and NSF-supported efforts.

Hrenya has been interested in solid flows since college. “As an undergraduate student, I was always interested in fluid mechanics but never really studied solids as a type of complex fluid. Yet, they are very prevalent in nature – avalanches, the rings of Saturn, transporting grains, pharmaceutical handling. I wanted to start developing general models of solid-based fluids which could be applied to all these different systems. My group is always trying to probe what is happening at the particle level and build up models from there.”

In her simulations, Hrenya utilizes dual approaches: discrete particle simulations (DPS) and continuum models. DPS enables her to model each individual particle and accurately predict flow behavior. However, current supercomputers do not allow for DPS in bigger systems, and so continuum models using DPS results in Navier Stokes-based equations are used to model macroscopic behavior. These continuum model results are then compared to experimental findings.

With computing speed playing such a huge role in the accuracy of her models, Hrenya is partnering with experts in high-performance computing. She and CU Director of Research Computing Thomas Hauser have obtained a DOE grant to merge open source codes to increase their efficiency with a goal of obtaining 108particles in simulations. Hrenya’s models have already been incorporated into a number of commercial and open-source codes such as MFIX and Fluent, earning her the 2014 AICHE PTF Lectureship Award in Fluidization.

In the future, Hrenya believes the adaptation to petascale and exascale computing will enable a new array of questions to be answered. She is open to whatever problems come along, whether in nature, industry or space.

“I have always focused on the fundamental interactions and then let the applications present themselves,” she says. Perhaps this is why her students have gone on to work in a variety of fields, including energy, food, and materials.

Beyond research, Hrenya has won campus-wide awards for her teaching. She spices up fluids and math classes by adding interesting background stories, such as the fact that Stokes almost drove off his fiancé by giving her a 50-page love letter.

Yet Hrenya has much more than particle modeling and teaching on her plate; she is serving as the 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting Chair and also as an Associate Editor for the AIChE Journal. She was interested in the latter position because, “as an editor for the AIChE Journal, I can both help raise the profile of the journal and help authors improve the quality of their individual papers.”

Before agreeing to become the Chair for the 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting, Hrenya asked Dean Rob Davis, a former AIChE Conference Chair himself, for advice. With Davis’s encouragement, Hrenya took on the challenge and is currently in the midst of spearheading new plenary sessions, putting together the technical program, determining awards, and completing a myriad of other tasks.

Learn more:

>>Christine Hrenya to Chair 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting
>>Christine Hrenya Appointed Associate Editor for the AIChE Journal
>>Hrenya to Receive 2014 AICHE PTF Lectureship Award in Fluidization
>>Christine Hrenya Leads $1.5M Industry-sponsored Grant for Fundamental Particle Flow Research
>>Christine Hrenya Wins $686K Grant for Flow Simulations
>>Christine Hrenya Awarded $450K for Solar Power Plant Research

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Christine Hrenya Wins $686K Grant for Flow Simulations

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 21:35:45 +0000

Christine Hrenya Wins $686K Grant for Flow Simulations Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/06/2016 - 14:35

ChBE Professor Christine Hrenya and co-PI Thomas Hauser of research computing received an 18-month award of $686K from the Department of Energy for “AOI [4B] MFIX DEM Enhancement for Industry-Relevant Flows.”

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Christine Hrenya Appointed Associate Editor for the AIChE Journal

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 21:26:03 +0000

Christine Hrenya Appointed Associate Editor for the AIChE Journal Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/04/2015 - 14:26

Professor Christine Hrenya has been appointed an Associate Editor of the AIChE Journal. This high-impact, peer-reviewed monthly journal covers groundbreaking research in nine chemical engineering and related fields.

Hrenya brings with her experience from her 3 years (2013-2015) as an editor for Aerosol Science and Technology.

Her new role will add to Hrenya’s already considerable responsibilities as chair of the 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

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Christine Hrenya to Chair 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting

Anonymous — Fri, 01 May 2015 17:10:23 +0000

Christine Hrenya to Chair 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/01/2015 - 11:10

Professor Christine Hrenya has been selected to chair the 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting in San Francisco. This meeting is the premier annual gathering of over 5000 chemical engineers.

Hrenya recently won the prestigious 2014 AIChE Lectureship Award in Fluidization. She is also an editor of Aerosol Science and Technology.

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Hrenya to Receive 2014 AICHE PTF Lectureship Award in Fluidization

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Hrenya to Receive 2014 AICHE PTF Lectureship Award in Fluidization Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/12/2014 - 00:00

Congratulations to Professor Christine Hrenya who will receive the 2014 AIChE Particle Technology Forum Lectureship Award in Fluidization at the Annual AIChE Meeting this coming November in Atlanta, Georgia. The award recognizes an individual’s outstanding scientific/technical research contributions with impact in the field of fluidization and fluid-particle flow systems.

Professor Hrenya is internationally renowned for her significant contributions to the fundamental understanding of fluidized systems. Her innovative work has already gained the attention of industry, as evidenced by multiple industrial collaborations. Her models have also been incorporated into a number of commercial and open-source codes (Barracuda, Fluent, MFIX).

The award is presented “In recognition of her significant contributions to the fundamental understanding of fluid-particle systems resulting in her models being incorporated into a number of commercial and open-source codes.”

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