For most individuals, boiling water is something we take as a right. For Associate Professor Matteo Bucci, discovering the physics behind boiling has been a decades-long journey filled with unexpected challenges and latest insights.
The seemingly easy phenomenon is amazingly difficult to check in complex systems reminiscent of nuclear reactors, yet is at the center of quite a lot of vital industrial processes. Uncovering its secrets could thus enable advances in efficient energy production, electronics cooling, water desalination, medical diagnostics and more.
“Boiling is significant for applications far beyond nuclear energy,” says Bucci, who landed a job at MIT in July. “Cooking is utilized in 80 percent of power plants to generate electricity. My research has implications for space propulsion, energy storage, electronics and the increasingly vital task of cooling computers.”
Bucci's lab has developed latest experimental techniques to make clear a wide selection of boiling and warmth transfer phenomena which have limited energy projects for many years. The fundamental problem is that bubbles form so quickly that they form a vapor band on a surface, stopping further heat transfer. In 2023, Bucci and associates developed a unifying principle It goals to tackle the issue generally known as the boiling crisis, which could enable more efficient nuclear reactors and stop catastrophic failures.
For Bucci, every advance brings latest possibilities – and latest inquiries to answer.
“Which is the very best paper?” asks Bucci. “The best paper is the following one. I believe Alfred Hitchcock at all times said that it doesn't matter how good the last movie was. If your next one is poor, people won't remember it. I at all times tell my students that our next paper should at all times be higher than the last. It’s a continuous journey of improvement.”
From technology to bubbles
The Italian village where Bucci grew up had a population of about 1,000 when he was a baby. He acquired mechanical skills by working in his father's machine shop, taking apart and reassembling appliances reminiscent of washing machines and air conditioners to see what was inside. He also developed a passion for cycling and competed in the game until he went to the University of Pisa for undergraduate and postgraduate studies.
In college, Bucci was fascinated by matter and the origins of life, but he also liked constructing things, and when it got here time to choose from physics and engineering, he decided that nuclear engineering was a superb middle ground.
“I even have a passion for constructing and understanding how things are made,” says Bucci. “Nuclear technology was a not possible but obvious alternative. That was unlikely because in Italy nuclear power was already out of the energy landscape, so there have been only a few of us. At the identical time, there was a mix of mental and practical challenges, which I like.”
Bucci went to France for his doctoral thesis, where he met his wife after which worked in a French national laboratory. One day his department head asked him to work on a nuclear reactor safety problem generally known as transient boiling. To solve the issue, he wanted to make use of a measurement method developed by MIT professor Jacopo Buongiorno. That's why he received a scholarship in 2013 to develop into a visiting scientist at MIT. Since then he has been researching boiling at MIT.
Today, Bucci's lab is developing latest diagnostic techniques to check boiling and warmth transfer, in addition to latest materials and coatings that would make heat transfer more efficient. The work has given researchers unprecedented insight into the conditions inside a nuclear reactor.
“The diagnostics we have now developed can summarize the equivalent of 20 years of experimental work in a one-day experiment,” says Bucci.
This data, in turn, led Bucci to a remarkably easy model that describes the boiling crisis.
“The effectiveness of the boiling process on the surface of the nuclear reactor cladding determines the efficiency and safety of the reactor,” explains Bucci. “It's like a automotive that you need to speed up, but there's an upper limit. In a nuclear reactor, this upper limit is set by the boiling heat transfer. Therefore, we’re serious about understanding what this upper limit is and the way we will overcome it to enhance reactor performance.”
Another particularly impactful area of research for Bucci is two-phase immersion cooling, a process by which hot server parts bring liquid to a boil and the resulting vapor then condenses on a heat exchanger above to create a continuing, passive cooling cycle.
“It keeps chips cold with minimal energy wastage, significantly reducing data center power consumption and carbon dioxide emissions,” explains Bucci. “Data centers emit as much CO2 as your complete aviation industry. By 2040 they may account for over 10 percent of emissions.”
Support for college kids
Bucci says working with students is essentially the most rewarding a part of his job. “They have such great passion and expertise. It’s motivating to work with individuals who have the identical passion as you.”
“My students are usually not afraid to try latest ideas,” Bucci adds. “They almost never stop in front of an obstacle – sometimes to the purpose where you might have to slow them down and get them back on target.”
By leading the Red Lab within the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Bucci seeks to supply students with each independence and support.
“We don’t train students, we train future researchers,” says Bucci. “I believe crucial a part of our job shouldn’t be just providing the tools, but additionally supplying you with the boldness and initiative to resolve problems. These may very well be business problems, problems in experiments, problems together with your lab mates.”
Some of the more unique experiments Bucci's students perform require them to take measurements during free fall in an airplane to attain weightlessness.
“Space exploration is every child’s big dream,” says Bucci, who accompanies the scholars on experiments about twice a 12 months. “It may be very entertaining and galvanizing research for college kids. Zero g gives you a brand new perspective on life.”
Apply AI
Bucci can also be enthusiastic about integrating artificial intelligence into his field. In 2023, he was a co-recipient of a Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI) project in thermal science dedicated exclusively to machine learning. In a nod to the promise of AI in his field, Bucci also recently founded a journal to showcase AI-driven research advances.
“Our community doesn’t provide a house for individuals who wish to develop machine learning techniques,” says Bucci. “We desired to create a way for people in computer science and thermal science to work together to make progress. I believe we actually need to bring computer scientists into our community to speed up this process.”
Bucci also believes that AI will be used to process massive amounts of knowledge collected using the brand new experimental techniques he has developed, in addition to to model phenomena that researchers cannot yet study.
“It is feasible that AI will give us the power to know things that can not be observed, or at the least guide us at nighttime as we try to search out the foundation causes of many problems,” says Bucci.
