A video of Maurizio Laudone's new dual porous model for the terrestrial emission of nitrous oxide was presented by Peter Matthews in a hydrological sciences session at EGU, Vienna. Peter Matthews was also solicited opening speaker for the Soil Systems Science session on water repellancy.

Mercury porosimetry carried out by the research group passed an internal ISO 9001:2008 audit on 30th April with only two minor non-conformities and four observations – the best for any new audit in the university. All work for external clients is now carried out to exacting standards laid down by the ISO procedures, which can be examined on request. They include calibration of all measured variables (pressure, temperatures and weight) to external National Physical Laboratory standards, and additional validation with a Certified Reference Material.

Peter Matthews gave a first glimpse of a new, dual porous version of Pore-Cor designed to model soil - see EGU Vienna, above. The idea to travel to Bratislava by flying to Vienna and hiring a German car proved exciting - twice pulled over by the police ! The meeting was held in a Soviet-era conference centre owned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Peter Matthews gave an invited plenary lecture entitled ‘New developments in the multiple property characterisation of meso- and macro-porous materials’, which included dual porous paper coatings and catalysts (example shown left), and sintered metal filters .

Peter Matthews gave a talk entitled ‘Measurement and simulation of the effect of compaction on the pore structure and hydraulic conductivity of grassland and arable soil’, based on work now published in Water Resources Research (May 2010). 2nd year environmental science students from Plymouth visited the conference, and were given a guided tour of the soil physics laboratories, which contain new apparatus designed to give the very high precision water retention curves required for modelling by Pore-Cor. The students are pictured on the right at the sister institution North Wyke Research, under the tutelage of Dr Kit McLeod.

On PhD student Chris Gribble gave a talk on the adsorption of 'stickies' - sticky polymers which interfere with paper recycling. His project concerns the adsorption of the species onto the minerals in the recycled paper, so that they do not interfere with the paper surface and do not have to be discharged into the waste water.

John Price successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled 'Measurement and Modelling of Structure and Pore-Level Processes in Filters and Wicks', to external examiner Dr Steve Tarleton. A publication giving good predictions of stainless steel filters has been published in AiChE journal, and is incorporated in a new Filtration Module in Pore-Cor.

Peter Matthews gave an inaugural lecture entitled ‘Pores for Thought’ . It was aimed at a wide audience, and began with him dressed in a gas mask, in honour of the use of Pore-Cor for elucidating differences in the filter materials in gas mask filters.

Peter Matthews was invited plenary speaker at the 14th Porotec International Workshop on the Characterisation of Porous Media (XIV Workshop über die Charakterisierung von feinteiligen und porösen Festkörpern). He explained The challenges of characterising dual porous materials: paper coatings , catalysts, adsorbents and soils, and demonstrated how to determine the number of ‘ink bottle’ pores (pores with only a single narrow entry) in cement.