A new study by KAUST researchers reveals that the simple act of shielding ocean thermometers from the sun may improve coral reef restoration efforts[1]. The study, published in PLOS Climate, emphasizes the need for standardized practices to ensure reliable temperature measurements. It also positions KAUST to advise and set guidelines for coral restoration and monitoring efforts in the Red Sea.
Coral reefs occupy about 1% of the ocean, but they support over 25% of marine life. Economically, they are worth several trillion dollars annually and support the livelihood of over one billion people. Consequently, coral restoration and conservation efforts are rapidly growing for reefs worldwide, including in the Red Sea.
Rising ocean temperatures are the primary cause of coral bleaching and death around the world. Many corals already live at their maximum temperature threshold, and increases as small as 1°C can have devastating consequences. The role of subtle temperature changes on coral populations underscores the importance of accurately measuring ocean temperatures when planning restoration efforts worldwide. The need for water temperature measurements has led to a rapid growth in commercially available temperature loggers, yet there is little guidance on best practices.
“A little more than ten years ago, there was only one or two companies selling temperature loggers. Today, more than 10 companies are offering popular products,” said KAUST postdoc Walter Rich, who was part of the study.
The KAUST team led by Michael D. Fox determined that the accuracy of 10 common temperature loggers manufactured by six companies varied widely and that almost all models produced erroneously high temperatures when not shielded from direct sunlight.
To show this variability, working with the KAUST Coral Restoration Initiative — responsible for the largest coral restoration effort in the Red Sea — they reviewed 329 coral reef studies published between 2013 and 2022. Less than 5% of the studies reported intentionally shading their loggers, such as inserting them inside a PVC tube. This lack of proper deployment methods threatens the accuracy of global reef temperature records; indeed, experiments conducted by the research team found that if unprotected, recorded temperatures were inaccurately high, some by as much as 3°C.
The potential implications of inaccurately high-temperature measurements are widespread. For example, strategies for coral restoration may be assessing incorrect temperature thresholds for corals, risking poor selection of locations and species. The scientists argue that for proper scientific comparisons, research groups should embrace standards for temperature logger deployment and calibration and transparently report their methods.
Moreover, with Saudi Arabia beginning its huge investment in coral restoration and reef monitoring, the findings welcome a cheap and straightforward method to lower the cost and increase the success of the Kingdom’s coral restoration efforts.
“Our motivation for the study was to provide guidelines for Red Sea coral restoration and environmental monitoring on Saudi Arabian reefs. By demonstrating the benefits of this simple solution, we hope to facilitate new efforts to monitor ocean temperature that will have tremendous benefits to our understanding of coral survival in the Red Sea and beyond,” said Fox.
If your genes could set an alarm clock, EZH1 might be the one ringing the bell.
A new study has revealed how this underappreciated protein ensures the rhythmic expression of genes in skeletal muscle, aligning them with the body’s 24-hour internal cycles[1].
A KAUST-led research team showed that EZH1 plays a dual role in circadian regulation. It both stabilizes a critical protein called RNA Polymerase II — the molecular engine of gene transcription — and reshapes the structure of chromatin, the tightly packed form of DNA, to activate or silence genes on schedule.
Thanks to this surprising versatility, EZH1 functions like a maestro, ensuring that genes involved in metabolism, sleep and other essential processes rise and fall on cue. When the protein’s activity declines — as may occur with aging — genetic timing can falter, leading to metabolic imbalances and disease.
“EZH1-mediated rhythmicity could play a key role in maintaining the fidelity and adaptability of tissue-specific genetic programs,” says Peng Liu, who co-led the study with colleague Valerio Orlando.
The research team — which included imaging specialist Satoshi Habuchi and stem-cell biologist Mo Li — made these discoveries by studying skeletal muscle tissue from mice and conducting experiments on cultured mouse muscle cells. By tracking gene expression and protein activity over a 24-hour cycle, they found that EZH1 levels oscillate in tandem with other master circadian genes. This rhythmic pattern allows EZH1 to regulate thousands of other genes tied to the body’s internal clock.
One of EZH1’s key roles, the researchers discovered, is stabilizing RNA Polymerase II — the enzyme that converts DNA-encoded instructions into RNA intermediaries — in a process known as transcription, which drives protein production and cellular function. At the same time, EZH1 modifies chromatin by adding or removing chemical tags. These epigenetic adornments make genes more or less accessible for transcription.
The two functions of EZH1 work together to maintain a precise rhythm of gene expression, notes Orlando, an unexpected finding that, he says, “highlights the importance of continuing to explore the basic aspects of epigenetic mechanisms.”
The study also revealed the consequences of EZH1 malfunction. When the researchers disrupted EZH1 in cells, they found that the rhythmic expression of numerous genes fell out of sync.
This misalignment could lead to problems such as impaired muscle repair, disrupted metabolism and increased susceptibility to age-related diseases — conditions that might one day be treated by targeting EZH1 and its pathways with new medicines. Supporting this idea, the KAUST-led team demonstrated that restoring EZH1 function largely reinstated the disrupted rhythms.
Many questions remain, including how EZH1 functions outside muscle tissue. Genome-wide analyses showed that disrupting EZH1 dampened the rhythmic transcription of over 1,000 circadian-regulated genes. While some of these genes are tied to skeletal muscle function, many are involved in broader metabolic and cellular repair pathways.
As researchers continue to unravel the complexities of EZH1, the latest findings underscore a critical new insight: this understudied protein orchestrates genetic timekeeping with precision, ensuring our bodies run like clockwork.
An AI-powered tool from KAUST researchers is helping scientists trace hidden connections between diseases, revealing insights into how one illness might lead to another and, by extension, how treating one illness could help prevent another[1].
By systematically combing through medical literature and real-world patient data, this tool maps cause-and-effect relationships, creating a framework that could guide targeted therapeutic strategies and uncover potential for drug repurposing.
Think of it as the ultimate disease relationship detective. Using natural language processing, the tool scans vast quantities of biomedical research to pinpoint causal connections — like how high blood pressure can set the stage for heart failure.
“Instead of treating diseases as unrelated outcomes, our approach facilitates the identification of shared risk factors among causally linked diseases,” says Sumyyah Toonsi, a graduate student in the Bio-Ontology Research Group. “This deepens our understanding of human diseases and enhances the performance of risk-prediction tools for personalized medicine.”
The tool’s power lies in its ability to go beyond mere association. Traditional methods might highlight which diseases commonly co-occur, but the KAUST tool — developed by Toonsi and her team under the guidance of computer scientist Robert Hoehndorf — identifies which diseases can trigger others.
For example, type 2 diabetes leads to high blood sugar, causing small blood vessel disease, ultimately resulting in a diabetic eye condition. Mapping these relationships suggests that treating one “upstream” condition may help prevent or lessen downstream complications.
To achieve these insights, the tool integrates scientific literature with data from the UK Biobank, a large-scale health database of about half a million Britons. This dual approach validates disease connections by checking that diseases follow a logical sequence, with causes preceding outcomes. This process strengthens the evidence of causation while highlighting new connections that might otherwise be overlooked.
Among its discoveries, the tool unearthed surprising links. As Toonsi explains, “We found endocrine, metabolic and nutritional diseases to be leading drivers of diseases in other categories,” including cardiovascular, nervous system and inflammatory diseases of the gut and eye. “This is interesting because many metabolic diseases can be managed with lifestyle changes, opening opportunities for broad disease prevention,” she says.
A standout feature is the tool’s ability to improve polygenic risk scores (PRS) — calculations that assess a person’s genetic susceptibility to disease. Standard PRS models don’t account for how one genetic variant might affect multiple diseases, but by adding causal disease relationships, the KAUST tool produces an enhanced PRS that improves prediction accuracy, especially for complex diseases.
This helps disentangle pleiotropic effects, where a single gene variant can impact multiple conditions. By factoring in these causal links, the tool offers a more holistic view of genetic risk.
Now freely available to the research community, this tool represents a major advancement for scientists exploring disease connections. Its potential applications range from refining prevention strategies to suggesting new uses for existing drugs. As researchers further investigate disease pathways, this tool could serve as a key resource in the quest to decode the interconnected landscape of human health.
A bespoke copper catalyst could slash the energy penalty of one of the most foundational processes in the chemical industry. The catalyst can harness sunlight to selectively oxidize methane, the main component of natural gas, into formaldehyde, a versatile chemical feedstock from which high-value products from polymers to pharmaceuticals can be made[1].
Despite its natural abundance, methane poses challenges as a chemical feedstock. “It’s difficult to liquefy, has high transportation costs, and cannot be used directly as a chemical raw material,” says Chengyang Feng, a researcher in the sustainable energy advanced catalysis group of Huabin Zhang, who led the research. “Large amounts of methane are directly flared or vented in gas and oil fields, leading to resource wastage and environmental issues,” Zhang adds.
Where methane is still used for chemical production, it is converted first into a more reactive intermediate called syngas: but this energy-intensive conversion requires high temperatures and pressures.
An alternative, mild method of methane conversion could be used to react it with oxygen from the air, in a process powered by sunlight, to create formaldehyde. “Converting methane to formaldehyde transforms the gas into a valuable liquid that is already used widely in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries,” Feng says. “This reduces the difficulty of storage and transportation and improves economic returns.”
The challenge of photo-catalytically reacting oxygen with methane is that it typically generates a mixture of products, including methanol and even carbon dioxide, as well as formaldehyde. The reaction outcome critically depends on the oxygen activation step. Formaldehyde is formed when the oxygen activation generates reactive species called hydroperoxyl radicals.
To promote hydroperoxyl radical generation and formaldehyde production, the team designed a photocatalyst based on a material called a metal-organic framework (MOF). At the nanoscale, these porous crystalline substances consist of metal sites held together with carbon-based organic linkers in a highly regular repeating pattern. By changing the metals and the linkers that the material is made from, different molecular architectures can be accessed.
The researchers created MOFs in which the metal sites were fully bonded to the linkers, forming a chemically inert backbone. “When single copper atoms are then specifically anchored within this framework, these sites become the sole active centers in the catalyst, enabling precise modulation of the reaction pathway,” says Zhang.
The team tailored the environment around each copper atom so that the oxygen molecules could only adsorb to the activating metal end-on. “By changing the initial adsorption mode of oxygen, we achieved the selective formation of hydroperoxyl radicals and the generation of formaldehyde,” says Feng. The photocatalyst converted methane into formaldehyde in high yield and near-100 percent selectivity.
The team’s next target is to harness more of the energy in sunlight, Zhang says. “Our photocatalysts only respond to the ultraviolet and part of the visible light spectrum, leading to substantial solar energy loss,” he says.
The team aims to develop catalysts that capture the remaining solar energy as heat to help drive the reaction. “Our next major endeavor will be to test our optimized catalyst at scale, outdoors, using sunlight.”
Saudi Arabia’s government aims to generate more than half of the country’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030. This goal is particularly pertinent in the NEOM region, where an ambitious large-scale project is underway to build a community powered entirely by renewable energy sources.
KAUST researchers have developed a clustering-optimization model that could help to design an integrated multisector energy system for NEOM[1]. Crucially, their model factors in days when weather conditions are such that the demand for total electricity becomes extreme in that part of the world. For example, when limited solar irradiation or no wind means the system comes close to being unable to supply the required electricity.
“Existing optimization models use weather input data, but usually ignore outliers, which is unhelpful when it comes to determining reliability in renewable power generation,” says Ricardo Lima at KAUST. Lima worked on the project with colleagues including Jefferson Riera and Justin Ezekiel, under the supervision of KAUST faculty members Omar Knio and Martin Mai.
“The inherent intermittency of wind and solar power means that it is vital to factor in weather pattern variability, including extreme events,” continues Lima. “Integrating renewable technologies across sectors is another important consideration. We took a novel multisector approach to optimize the proposed system.”
The researchers used past weather data (2008-2018) from the NEOM region in their model. Their approach incorporates the interactions between electricity generation, water desalination and heating generation, allowing for the exchange of information about demand and generation throughout the system.
The model could be expanded to include district cooling systems and novel energy storage methods. The results provide valuable insights for both NEOM and Saudi Arabia’s national power systems.
“Our optimization method searches through many combinations of renewable power generation, water desalination, geothermal energy and heat conversion technologies to identify the best operational conditions to meet hourly demands,” says Riera. “Our goal is to design an efficient system that minimizes yearly investments and operating costs.”
The model highlights several key points for planners to consider. Firstly, designing 100% renewable systems without factoring in extreme weather conditions results in energy demands not being met. This leads to a continued reliance on external power or water supplies at certain times. However, if sufficient storage and flexibility are built into the system — and extreme weather is factored in — the reliability of the system significantly improves.
“NEOM’s system could benefit from harnessing concentrated solar power and overall costs would be reduced by investing in geothermal energy, particularly for the heating sector,” says Lima. “For NEOM’s power system, the costs of extreme weather events could be mitigated by including 10% of energy generated from fossil fuels.”
The team will continue to refine and optimize their model further. For example, the model does not yet consider fluctuations in renewable technologies’ capital and operational costs, which may affect the resulting energy system. The team also plans to incorporate hydrogen production and its conversion to other chemicals in the model.
“This specific work relied on historical weather data, but it could easily be adapted to use projections from climate change models for specific regions. We hope to leverage these projections to design resilient energy systems in the face of climate change,” concludes Knio.
A detection technology that can create sharp images from ultra-low X-ray doses could improve the safety of X-ray medical imaging. The invention achieves high sensitivity using a novel arrangement of perovskite single crystals as X-ray detecting materials[1].
Although X-ray machines remain a key form of medical imaging, X-rays are a high energy form of ionizing radiation and high doses are associated with an increased risk of cancer. Keeping X-ray exposure to within safe limits curtails medical use.
An intense search is underway to identify materials that could increase the sensitivity of X-ray detectors, enabling high-quality medical images using very low X-ray doses.
“In recent years, many perovskite single crystal materials have demonstrated excellent X-ray detection performance,” says KAUST researcher Xin Song, a member of Omar Mohammed’s research group, who led the research.
When an X-ray photon strikes a perovskite semiconductor crystal, it generates a pair of electric charges, one positive and one negative. When these charges reach electrodes at the perovskite edges, they create a photocurrent from which X-ray images can be generated.
To push the performance of perovskite X-ray detectors further, the team has targeted the materials’ ‘dark current’. “The dark current of an X-ray detector semiconductor refers to the electrical current that flows through the device when it is not exposed to X-rays,” says Song. Dark current is primarily caused by heat-generated charge carriers and leakage currents within the device, she says.
The dark current in an X-ray detector can obscure low-dose X-ray signals and introduce additional noise. “This reduces the signal-to-noise ratio and negatively impacts the overall performance of the device,” Song says.
The research team has now shown that an approach called cascade engineering can effectively suppress dark current. “Cascade engineering connects a type of single crystals in series,” Mohammed explains. Connecting crystals in series increases the electrical resistance through the devices. “This can effectively reduce the dark current and noise of the device without impacting the X-ray generated charge carriers, improving detector performance and reducing its detection limit.”
The team developed a device based on a perovskite called methylammonium lead bromide (MAPbBr3) to test the cascade engineering concept. “This material exhibits relatively high stability, and the synthesis process enables MAPbBr3 single crystal preparation with excellent reproducibility,” Song says. These attributes make the material an ideal candidate for X-ray detector fabrication with significant commercial potential, she says.
The researchers tested connections of 1 to 4 single crystals in series, and showed that increasing the number of series connections effectively reduced the dark current. Higher numbers of crystals also weakened device detection sensitivity, however. “We found that the connection of two crystals in series achieved the lowest detection limit while maintaining higher sensitivity,” Song says. Pairing two crystals using cascade engineering lowered the detection limit from 590 nGy·s−1 to just 100 nGy·s−1.
“We are now investigating the cascade structure for other perovskite single crystals, with the goal of reducing their detection limits still further,” Mohammed says. The team is also working on the packaging of MAPbBr3 cascade single crystals for real-world medical imaging.
A new international climate modeling study led by researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) highlights different potential scenarios for the future climate of the Arabian Peninsula, depending on which climate policies are implemented.[1]
The Arabian Peninsula has long been known for its high temperatures and water scarcity that challenge living and working there. However, these problems will only exasperate with the temperature increases predicted by all climate models, affecting a population that is expected to double between now and the end of the century.
KAUST Emeritus Professor Georgiy Stenchikov, who this month was part of the team of KAUST and international researchers that won the “Nobel” prize for high-performance computing, the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling, led the Arabian Peninsula study using a sophisticated tool known as “statistical downscaling” that was applied to climate models to analyze the Middle East region.
“We applied statistical downscaling to 26 global climate models under different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, giving us a spatial resolution of 9 km” said Stenchikov. “This fine resolution enhances our ability to detect and analyze regional warming and hotspots more effectively, presenting the most accurate regional-scale prediction of temperature change over the Middle East and North Africa.”
After applying this technique, Stenchikov, along with his colleagues and lead author Abdul Malik, found that some regions in the Middle East are heating at rates three times faster than global averages.
In the best-case scenario, if greenhouse gas emissions reach net zero by 2050, which reflects the goals of the Paris Agreement, animations from the modeling reveal that temperatures of the Arabian Peninsula will still rise by more than 2.5 degrees before the year 2100, with some parts warming 3.5 times faster than global averages.
In the more alarming scenario, if greenhouse gas emissions reach what climate scientists call the “high emission scenario,” several provinces in Saudi Arabia, including Riyadh, may see average temperatures rise by more than 9 degrees this century. These temperature rises are expected to put severe stress on both the habitability and economic productivity of the region, reiterating the importance of good climate policy.
This research highlights KAUST’s focus on tackling regional climate issues, aligning with its efforts highlighted at COP16 to combat desertification and promote sustainability.
High value metals, such as lithium, could be extracted directly from seawater, lake brines, or could be recycled from electronic waste, a study of designer nanoporous membranes suggests. The membranes incorporate ring-shaped ‘macrocycle’ molecules, which form precisely defined pores that permit only the target metal to pass[1]. Macrocycle membranes can also efficiently purify challenging mixtures of high value chemicals, such as pharmaceutical ingredients, the KAUST research team has shown[2].
Separating multicomponent mixtures is a core part of industrial activity ranging from raw minerals processing to fine chemical and pharmaceutical production. These steps have a large environmental footprint, however. Most separations involve energy-intensive heat-driven processes such as distillation and evaporation. “More effective separation methods would lead to a much more sustainable and profitable chemical industry, reducing the need for carbon capture at the end of the process,” says Suzana Nunes, who led the research.
“It is crucial to develop new materials that enable more efficient separations,” says Gyorgy Szekely, who co-led part of the work. A few industries – notably, seawater desalination – have employed membranes as an energy-efficient alternative to heat-driven separations. The membranes they use consist of tightly woven thin polymer sheets, through which water molecules can squeeze but salt cannot.
“Commercial membranes mostly separate water from salt, or separate large solutes from very small ones,” Nunes says. But because these membranes lack precisely defined pores, they are ineffective for finer-grained separations, she adds.
To efficiently separate mixtures of similarly sized molecules, Nunes and her colleagues developed membranes that incorporate ring-shaped macrocycles into their structure. “The macrocycles can act as a pore, tuned specifically for the size of molecule or ion to be transported,” Nunes says.
The team’s first challenge was to develop a versatile and scalable method for making membranes featuring embedded macrocycle, Szekely notes. The researchers were able to adapt an existing method that industry already uses to manufacture membranes, called interfacial polymerization.
This highlights the team’s pragmatism to enable easy industrial uptake. “Our focus is to invest in methods and materials that could fabricated at the scales required by industry,” Nunes says.
The membrane was made by combining the macrocycle component with a molecular linker. The interfacial polymerization method brings these two components together under controlled conditions, by exploiting that water and organic solvents do not mix. When the team created a macrocycle component that dissolved in water, and a linker component dissolved in organic solvent, then combined the two immiscible liquids, the membrane self-assembled as a thin film at the interface between the two liquids.
Nunes and Szekely showed that when they made membranes from a macrocycle called 18-crown-6, they could separate mixtures of closely related pharmaceutical molecular ingredients. “The membranes showed excellent selectivity,” Szekely says. “We could separate solutes that have small difference in their molecular weight, which is highly sought-after by the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries.”
Nunes also showed that, using a macrocycle called a cyclodextrin, the membrane could selectively concentrate valuable lithium or magnesium from salty mixtures mimicking seawater and industrial brines.
Macrocyclic molecules are readily available in a wide range of sizes, suggesting that ultra-selective macrocycle membranes tailor made for specific industrial separations could be created. Mixtures of metals generated from electronic waste recycling could also be separated by this method, Nunes says. “We are now investigating different macrocycles, different forms of self-assembly and different applications,” Nunes says. “In collaboration with industry, we are also working on scaling up the membranes,” she adds.
From skyscrapers to nanomaterials, detailed blueprints are an essential element of structural design, delineating how simple building blocks can be combined to create complex structures. A new approach for creating chemical blueprints of unprecedented complexity for porous crystalline structures such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) has been developed by researchers at KAUST[1].
The “merged nets” approach to MOF-blueprint creation has implications for the design of bespoke MOFs for sustainability-related applications including gas storage, catalysis and molecular separations.
Design blueprints for MOFs and related periodic porous materials called covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are based on a form of mathematical graphs called periodic nets. “By providing predefined patterns, periodic nets allow researchers to select molecular building blocks with compatible geometries, enabling their precise assembly into desired structures,” says Hao Jiang, a research scientist in Mohamed Eddaoudi’s research group. “This approach has facilitated the systematic construction of MOFs and COFs with targeted structures and properties,” Jiang says.
Previously, researchers could only rely on the 53 edge transitive nets — nets with one kind of edge — as a blueprint for the rational design MOF and COF. “These simple nets are insufficient as blueprints for more complex structures that are essential for achieving advanced properties and applications,” Jiang says. As a result, complex multicomponent MOFs synthesis had remained a slow and tedious process of trial and error.
The first step toward complex MOF rational design came in 2018, when the team made a simple MOF called Tb-spn-MOF-1 based on the edge-transitive net known as “spn” net. This MOF structure featured open sites that enabled additional molecular linkers to be placed as connectors between metal clusters within the material’s porous structure. The team realized that the placed linkers connecting with the metal cluster could be viewed as a separate MOF based on another known designable net, “hxg.” “The whole structure merged the spn and hxg nets into a more complex net,” Jiang says.
By merging two simple nets, the team had hit upon a blueprint that was far more complex than its component parts. They then enumerated all possible merged nets by analyzing all the 53 edge transitive nets and extracting the shared features between them, namely the “signature nets” for each net pair. “Merging requires specific compatible net pairs,” says Jiang. To systematically identify compatible pairs, the team developed the concept of “signature nets,” which captures key structural information about different nets. “If two nets share the same signature net, they may be compatible for merging,” Jiang says.
The discovery has generated 353 new blueprints for complex MOF design. “Using the robust design capabilities of our merged net framework, we have proposed over 100 multicomponent MOF platforms,” Eddaoudi says. Merged net blueprints can be divided into four structural categories based on the periodicity of the nets to be merged, ranging from three to zero periodic. “We validated the practicality of merged net design by crystallizing new materials representing all four categories,” he says.
The merged net methodology has great potential to accelerate the discovery of novel porous materials with impact on real-world applications in energy, environmental sustainability and beyond. “Leveraging the unprecedented design capabilities that merged nets offers, we have already started a multimillion-dollar project with Aramco to develop practical materials for the energy-efficient and cost-effective direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere,” Eddaoudi says.
Building safe skyscrapers and stirring cups of coffee have something in common: both involve a phenomenon known as “turbulent flow,” which, in these cases, is the movement of air particles around a tower or liquid around a spoon. Now, with the aid of state-of-the-art cameras, mechanical engineers at KAUST have discovered unexpected patterns in this seemingly chaotic flow under certain conditions[1]. Their findings could help improve the construction of airplanes and underwater vehicles, as well as the efficiency of flow in pipes and industrial equipment.
Saudi Arabia is currently constructing the Jeddah Tower, planned to be the world’s tallest structure at one kilometer high. “It is vital for comfort and safety to understand how turbulent wind will shake the Jeddah Tower,” says KAUST’s Sigurdur Thoroddsen. “Turbulent flow also governs weather patterns and mixing in ocean currents and river flows.”
Physicists have spent around a century studying how vortices are generated as fluids move through pipes and around objects. Until now, however, they thought these vortices were generated chaotically, so their behavior could not be accurately predicted or mitigated for in advance. But in a new study, Thoroddsen and colleagues Abdullah Alhareth, Vivek Mugundhan and Kenneth Langley discovered some unexpected patterns in their length, occurrence and alignment.
The team used four high-speed cameras with pulsed lasers to create a precise 3D map of fluorescent microparticles added to water, as the liquid was pumped from a 500-liter tank through a roughly 3-meter-long tunnel, which narrowed along its length. “We simultaneously tracked the position and speed of around 200,000 particles to reconstruct the vortices,” says Alhareth. “The experiment required a huge amount of computer memory and around six days of supercomputer time to analyze each dataset.”
The team discovered repeating vortex structures, aligned with the flow, which were stretched out and spun quickly. “This is similar to the way that rotating figure skaters will spin faster when they draw their arms towards their body,” says Thoroddsen. “We were surprised how prominent these vortices were, how often they appear, how quickly they form and how long they last.”
Alhareth holds a joint appointment at the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, and this partnership with KAUST enabled him to extend his understanding beyond water flow to air flow. “This gave me the opportunity to consider aerospace applications of our turbulence results compared with those obtained in a wind tunnel,” Alhareth explains. The findings could thus improve modeling of turbulent flows in aerodynamics, combustion, submarine and space applications, he says.
Predicting the formation of vortices will also help enable the design of clean and efficient engineering devices for a sustainable environment, says Mugundhan. “The vortices could enhance mixing and increase heat transport, or they could increase pressure drops along a pipe, so you need more pumping,” he says. “Our work will help people to model where they can enhance performance with vortices and anticipate where vortices will be a hindrance.”
