Lab

The TIPs laboratory has an experimental facility devoted to the realization, the characterization and the manipulation of systems including several phases (gas and/or liquid and/or solid), exchanging mass, energy or momentum, at a characteristic length scale between the micron and the millimeter.

The experimental facility is fully equipped for:

• the realization and the operation of micrometric and millimetric systems involving liquid and/or solid and/or gaseous phases exchanging momentum, energy and mass (flows in microchannels, flows in packed beds, fluid films, sprays, crystallization systems, bubbles in motion in a liquid, fluid-fluid contact in Hele Shaw cells, gas-liquid-solid contact lines on geometrically structured surfaces…);

• the development of experimental tools for the characterization, often with an optical technique, of the transport and phase change phenomena taking place within these systems, including the treatment of the acquired images by rapid and precise algorithms in order to extract the desired data.

The main features of the experimental facility are:

• A process engineering hall offering various pilots (spray dryer, fluidized bed, stirred tanks, crystallizer, air-lift...);
• A clean room (class 10,000);
• A complete and advanced equipment for the realization and the operation of microfluidic systems;
• The Nanoscribe 3D printer. This printer uses a 3D printing technology capable of working at a scale less than a thousandth of a millimeter;
• The FEMTOPrint equipment, for the 3D manufacturing of glass photomechanical structures at the 1µm-1mm scale;
• An air-conditioned room with floating floor, equipped in particular with optical tables and a vacuum chamber with controlled atmosphere, for the installation of fine precision optical diagnostic systems;
• Equipment for the realization of many optical systems, based on shadowgraphy, interferometry, laser velocimetry and schlieren effect (light sources, lenses...);
• A set of 5 complementary microscopes (including a 3D Keyence microscope);
• More than 10 cameras (including infrared and fast cameras);
• Many advanced tools for the characterization of physical or thermodynamic properties of systems (measurement of nano-forces, differential scanning calorimetry, tensiometer, rheometers, viscosimeters, densitometer, refractometers, UV spectrometer, high pressure liquid chromatography...);
• A mechanical workshop equipped with recent machines.

Take a tour of our lab: