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

Physical ParametersReservoir Descriptors Electrical ConductivityOil Saturation Dielectric PermittivityWater Saturation NeutronGas Saturation Borehole PressurePorosity Sound VelocityPermeability NMR Response Gamma-ray x-section Capillary 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 mm 3 sandstone showing simulated flow lines

Red blood cell bacterium encapsulates 1 micron Size of  - Globulin protein Transmission Electron Micrograph of FibrinLite Technetium isshrink-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 impression Transmission 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.