Graduate Student Spotlight: Balint Vanek

Efficiently designing oil-harvesting and processing facilities is key in the effort to reduce production costs – and the cost to the consumer. A greater understanding of how oil flows in various natural conditions, like oil-sand or oil-water flows, can lead to the optimized designing of pipes and other components critical to an efficient facility. AEM doctoral candidate Juan Padrino is researching some aspects of fundamental problems associated with these two-phase flows.
A doctoral candidate studying Fluid Mechanics under Professor Daniel Joseph in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, Padrino came to the University of Minnesota from his home nation of Venezuela seeking a richer understanding of the mechanics he utilized in everyday research in Venezuela’s national oil company.
In early 2003, Padrino decided to return to school to pursue graduate studies, he says, to acquire the tools of engineering science and applied mathematics needed for a deeper analysis of some of the intricate phenomena associated with the transport of multiphase mixtures that occurs not only in the oil industry but also in a variety of industrial processes.
“I contacted my current advisor, Professor Daniel Joseph, who had served as a consultant for my employer for several years and became one of his research assistants at the University of Minnesota while following doctorate studies in mechanics and aerospace engineering,” he recalls.
Now Padrino focuses on modeling two-phase flow, which could help industry better understand the complex liquid-liquid, liquid-gas, or liquid-solid flows observed in an oil well. His current research efforts are devoted, in particular, to the modeling of bubble dynamics and bubbly flows.

“In many cases, you have a pipe or a well with water and oil; gas and oil; or gas, oil, water, and sand,” Padrino explains, “It’s important for engineers who design and maintain processing facilities to be able to model and predict these flows.”
By understanding the properties of these types of flows, one can develop, for example, more accurate pressure gradient and volume fraction models that allow for the creation of pipes and equipment with appropriate dimensions and other attributes, all of which have the potential to increase efficiency and decrease production costs.
“It’s very hard and impractical to apply computational fluid dynamics packages to a big and complex system like an oil-processing facility,” Padrino says. “You may be able to simulate with great detail a separator or valve, but you cannot use CFD to simulate what happens from the well to the storing tank - you need to come up with engineering models that simplify things that are of secondary importance and model those phenomena that are important.”