Team Conquers Phase Change Conundrum

Eldred Chimowitz and Yonathan Shapir broke through a roadblock that was making computer simulations of phase change impossible.

Rochester researchers have created a mathematical model for a computer simulation process that could have an impact on everything from decaffeinating coffee to creating a more efficient fuel cell.

Modeling phase change—the shifting of matter from one phase to another, such as from liquid to gas—on a computer has been all but impossible, due to the increasingly complex way molecules behave as they start to shift from one phase to another.

“Computers would always bog down at the ‘critical slowdown,’” says Yonathan Shapir, professor of physics and chemical engineering. “The problem has baffled scientists for decades.”

So Shapir and his colleagues, chemical engineering professor Eldred Chimowitz and physics graduate student Subhranil De, “figured out a way to perform a kind of end-run around that critical-point slowdown, and the results allow us to calculate certain critical point properties for the first time,” says Shapir.