A decade of collaborative work with 30 researchers Chemists, physicists, mathematicians and engineers motivation: to study flow in porous and granular materials Also: bone mineralisation, composites structure, paper/ink interactions, biological tissue structure…..

Understanding and predicting properties of complex materials via imaging, visualisation, theoretical and computational modelling.

Mesoscale PhysicsDept Applied Mathematics, RSPE

The Consortium has included; Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, Total, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, Abu Dhabi Onshore, Maersk, Petronas, PetroBras, Japan Oil & Gas, ONGC (India), BHP, BG

ANU/UNSW spun-out company, Digitalcore, to provide a service for reservoir evaluation.

The group aims to; start a consortium in the mining sector make software available to publicly funded research develop a JV to develop scanning technology

The X-ray micro-Tomography Facility

Micro-focus X-ray source

Rockspecimen

Double helical trajectory (patented) means extremely high fidelity data from micron to centimetre scale for arbitrarily long samples. First of it’s kind.

Physical Parameters Reservoir DescriptorsElectrical Conductivity Oil SaturationDielectric Permittivity Water SaturationNeutron Gas SaturationBorehole Pressure PorositySound Velocity PermeabilityNMR ResponseGamma-ray x-sectionCapillary Pressure

How does fluid permeability correlate to other observables ?

We must manage our hydrocarbon resources efficiently

Instead of a single data point we can extract 100’s from a single core

1 mm3 sandstone showing simulated flow lines

Red blood cell

bacterium

encapsulates

1 micron

Size of-Globulin protein

Transmission Electron Micrographof FibrinLite

Technetium isshrink-wrappedshrink-wrapped

in graphite

The chief advantage of a radio-particle over a radio-labelled drug is huge increase in specific acitivity. A drug might have only one radioactive atom per molecule – a radioparticle might have 10,000 to a million !

Artist’s impressionTransmission Electron Micrograph

of FibrinLite particle cluster compared with a common blood protein

Sirtex Pty Ltd is an Australian company with a rapidly growing international business in the Liver Therapy (See October 2011 QANTAS In-Flight magazine).

Their SIR-Spheres are delivered directly into the diseased liver where the 30 micron beads lodge and ablate the tumours using the isotope Yttrium-90. This product is in wide spread use around the world for the palliative treatment of secondary liver carcinoma.

The Department of Applied Mathematics has teamed up with Sirtex to develop new nanoparticle-based therapies with improved diagnostic imaging capabilities. Several clinical trials are planned for the new year.

SIR-Sphere

Red blood cell

Human hair

bacterium.

FibrinLite

CT image of rabbit liver showing the distribution of SIR-Spheres.