This award will support Professor Lawrence Cerny of Utica College in a research collaboration with Professor Piero Foscolo of the University of L'Aquila, Italy. The inves- tigators intend to carry out research in the area of particle and particle-fluid interactions in solid-liquid suspensions. Fluidization and sedimentation approaches will be combined using red blood cells as a novel source of particles. One of the problems encountered in the testing of bed fluidization theories is the discrepancy occurring as the size of the bed particle is reduced to the micron level as well as when density differences between the particle and the fluid approach unity. This has been recently addressed by the Italian research group. To date they have been limited in these studies with spherical particles with a diameter of 1 mm and a density of 1.26 gm/ml. By incorporating the U.S. researcher's approach using erythrocytes, from either human or bovine blood, these investigations can be extended and provide a new model for particles with little or no interactions between them.
