Chris Browne

Chris Browne is an assistant professor in chemical engineering. His lab designs complex fluids to improve transport in subsurface reservoirs to improve energy and environmental remediation processes: including geothermal energy extraction, oil recovery, groundwater remediation, and carbon storage by mineralization. In these settings, bulk and interfacial transport is often impeded by laminar flow through highly heterogeneous, disordered 3D pore space. The lab designs complex flow additives that controllably inject chaotic fluctuations, or embed rheological responsivity to passively self-regulate the flow. They use microscopy to directly image transport within 3D disordered porous media representative of these subsurface reservoirs, and develops methods to directly interrogate heat transfer and in situ reaction kinetics. By designing fluids that harness the messiness of their surroundings, the lab aims to circumvent traditional transport limitations in these environmental processes. Chris Browne obtained his B.S. from Purdue University, his Ph.D. from Princeton University, and worked as a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania.