About the Project
The University of Leicester has developed a unique tool to model the dynamical dispersion of pollution in the urban environment. FluidAir was developed during a highly successful PhD studentship between 2013 and 2016, and has led to the submission of five peer-reviewed publications. This successful team is now looking to recruit a new PhD student to enhance this model with new functionality including calibration against new sensor networks and airborne measurements, and incorporation of basic chemistry.
Global population increases, urbanisation and industrialisation have combined to result in significant air quality challenges across the world, resulting in an economic impact of over £1Tn p.a. The air quality group at the University of Leicester has a number of cutting-edge technologies to contribute to this research and operational challenge. A new spin-out company has been created to commercialise a range of this research, and this CASE PhD will be supported by this new company, EarthSense Systems Ltd (www.earthsense.co.uk). This studentship is supervised by Prof. Roland Leigh and Prof. Paul Monks at the University of Leicester, and James Eddy, MD of EarthSense Systems Ltd.
Figure 1: The FluidAir Model, developed at the University of Leicester, showing the degree of dispersion of key traffic pollutants.
Funding Notes
This studentship is one of a number of fully funded studentships available to the best UK and EU candidates available as part of the NERC DTP CENTA consortium.
For more details of the CENTA consortium please see the CENTA website: www.centa.org.uk.
Applicants must meet requirements for both academic qualifications and residential eligibility: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/skills/postgrad/
Please direct informal enquiries to the project supervisor. If you wish to apply formally, please do so via: http://www2.le.ac.uk/study/research/funding/centa/how-to-apply-for-a-centa-project
References
Prospective students are encouraged to read available literature on typical pollution dispersion calculations in urban environments, a classic example being:
Hanna, SR and Britter, RE (2002) Wind flow and vapor cloud dispersion at industrial and urban sites. John Wiley and Sons, New York.
Further, available publications from this team will give a strong example of the existing system and form of expected outputs.
A. Jeanjean, G. Hinchliffe, W.A. McMullan, P.S. Monks, R.J. Leigh, A CFD study on the effectiveness of trees to disperse road traffic emissions at a city scale, Atmospheric Environment, Available online 18 August 2015, ISSN 1352-2310, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2015.08.003.(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223101530248X)
A. Jeanjean, P.S. Monks, R.J. Leigh, Modelling the effectiveness of urban trees and grass on PM2.5 reduction via dispersion and deposition at a city scale, Atmospheric Environment, Available online 19 September 2016, ISSN 1352-2310, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2016.09.033.(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231016307336)