As member of the Consortium for Advance Research on Transport of Hydrocarbons in the Environment (CARTHE), our goal is to improve our understanding of the turbulent transport of pollutants resulting from a deepwater blowout. In such scenarios, the mixture of different fractions of oil creates a multiphase plume that, driven by the buoyancy force, grows in the vertical direction across the water column. Its dynamics depend strongly on the turbulent mixing and may be significantly affected by the background stratification and/or the Earth rotation.
My interests include the development, testing and application of turbulence resolving numerical tools that allow us to inquire what is the fate of the hydrocarbons in the ocean and what are the factors that influence its transport. I am also curious about the surface transport in the ocean and the liquid-liquid phase breakup processes in turbulent flows.
Alex Fabregat Tomàs 