Fabrizio CROCCOLO - CO2ES

From September 2018 I am Professor at the LFCR of E2S-UPPA leading  the industrial chair CO2 Enhanced Storage (CO2ES) on thermodynamic studies for enhancing CO2 storage in deep aquifers. 

The CO2ES project is funded by E2S-UPPA, TotalEnergies, CNES and BRGM.

From September 2015 to August 2017 I have been a postdoc researcher on the development of optical techniques for investigating thermodiffusion in ternary mixtures for the French Space Agency, Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), working at the LFCR lab in Anglet (FR).

From November 2012 to August 2015 I worked at the Anglet site of the Laboratoire des Fluides Complexes et leurs Réservoirs (LFCR), directed by Guillaume Galliero at the University of Pau (France). For several years I have developed optical techniques for investigating thermodiffusion in porous media and high pressure conditions. In particular I have studied the Soret effect by analyzing the non-equilibrium fluctuations by means of dynamic near field scattering techniques. Recently we could observe the effect of confinement on the dynamics of concentration non-equilibrium fluctuations, in collaboration with Prof. José Maria Ortiz de Zárate and Prof. Aleks Donev. In parallel I study the Soret-driven convective instabilities in slightly inclined binary liquid mixtures in collaboration with Prof. Alberto Vailati.

From November 2010 to October 2012 I worked as PostDoc at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) in the Soft Matter and Photonics group of Prof. Frank Scheffold. Here I develop my DyNEFI project (supported by a Marie-Curie IEF Fellowship) dealing with applications of the Near Field Imaging techniques to dynamic measurements on Soft Matter samples.

Since many years I actively collaborate with Alberto Vailati at the Physics Department of the University of Milan (Italy) about several space projects mostly related to the investigation of non-equilibrium fluctuations in complex fluids.

I also had a strong collaboration with José Maria Ortiz de Zarate from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) until his premature death in 2020. He was the one developing the theory of non-equilibrium fluctuations whenever we were not able to understand our experimental results.

In the past, I collaborated with the group of Francesco Mantegazza and Doriano Brogioli at the Medecine department of University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy). The collaboration involved the development of innovative optical techniques for Soft Matter and medecine applications.

From November 2009 to October 2010 I was PostDoc at the University of Pau, in the Laboratoire des Fluides Complexes with Henri Bataller, where I performed experimental activity on optical techniques to study the Soret effect in multi-component oil mixtures in porous media under high pressure. This position was supported by the University of Bordeaux-1 and the European Space Agency.

From January 2006 to October 2009 I have been a PostDoc in the PLASMAPROMETEO Center of Excellence at University of Milano-Bicocca under the guide of Claudia Riccardi. Here I started up an optics lab to develop optical techniques as diagnostical tools on plasma physics. Moreover I designed and built an inductive plasma source to study new plasma treatments on various materials and I spent part of my time analysing various samples with a FIB/SEM microscope.

I did my PhD (2006) and Master thesis (2001) within the Optics and Microgravity laboratory of Marzio Giglio at University of Milano under the supervision of Alberto Vailati. There I focused on the dynamical analysis of non-equilibrium fluctuations in free-diffusion experiments and I designed and built a flowing-junction cell for preparing a microgravity free-diffusion experiment.