Most people take boiling water for something obvious. For the associate professor Matteo Bucci, the discovery of physics for cooking was a ten -year journey full of unexpected challenges and new insights.
A seemingly simple phenomenon is extremely difficult to examine in complex systems, such as nuclear reactors, and yet it is in the core of a wide range of important industrial processes. Unlocking its secrets can therefore enable progress in efficient energy production, cooling electronics, exposing water, medical diagnostics and others.
“Cooking is important for the application far beyond nuclear,” says Bucci, who won the term in myth in July. “Boiling is used in 80 % of power plants that produce electricity. My tests affect the space drive, energy storage, electronics and the more important task of cooling computers.”
The BUCCI laboratory has developed new experimental techniques to shed light on a wide range of boiling and heat transfer phenomena, which have had limited energy projects for decades. The main of them is the problem caused by bubbles forming so fast that they form a steam range on the surface that prevents further heat transfer. In 2023, Bucci and colleagues developed Uniform Covering a problem known as a boiling crisis that can allow more efficient nuclear reactors and prevent catastrophic failures.
In the case of BUCCI, every fight against progress brings new opportunities – and new questions that should be answered.
“What is the best paper?” Bucci asks. “The best article is next. I think Alfred Hitchcock said that it doesn't matter how good your last movie was. If your next one is poor, people will not remember it. I always tell my students that our next article should always be better than the last. This is a continuous journey of improvement.”
From engineering to bubbles
The Italian village in which Bucci grew up had about 1000 population in childhood. He obtained mechanical skills by working in a father's machine workshop and dismantling and re -assembly of devices such as washing machines and air conditioners to see what is inside. He also gained a passion for cycling, competing in sport until he attended the University of Pisa in bachelor and master's studies.
In studies, Bucci was fascinated by the matter and the beginnings of his life, but he also liked building things, so when the time came to choose between physics and engineering, he decided that nuclear engineering is a good means.
“I have a passion for building and understanding how they are being created,” says Bucci. “Nuclear engineering was a very unlikely but obvious choice. It was unlikely because in Italy the nuclear was already beyond the landscape of energy, so there was very few of us. At the same time there was a combination of intellectual and practical challenges that I like.”
Bucci went to France for a doctorate, where he met his wife, and went to work in the French National Laboratory. One day his head of the department asked him to work on a problem in the safety of a nuclear reactor known as temporary cooking. To solve this, he wanted to use the method of pioneering measurements by Professor Mit Jacopo Buongiorno, so he received money for a subsidy to become a scientist in myth in 2013. Since then, he has been learning to cook in myth.
Today, the BUCCI laboratory is developing new diagnostic techniques to test for boiling and heat transfer along with new materials and coatings that can increase the efficiency of heat transfer. Work gave researchers an unprecedented view of the conditions inside the nuclear reactor.
“We have developed diagnostics through us, it can collect the equivalent of 20 years of experimental work in a one -day experiment,” says Bucci.
These data, in turn, led Bucci to an extremely simple model describing the boiling crisis.
“The effectiveness of the boiling process on the surface of the nuclear reactor cladding determines the reactor's performance and safety,” explains Bucci. “It's like a car that you want to speed up, but there is an upper limit. In the case of a nuclear reactor, this upper limit is dictated by the boiling heat transfer, so we are interested in understanding what the upper borders is and how we can overcome it to improve the reactor performance.”
Another particularly influential research area for BUCCI is two -phase immersion cooling, a process in which the hot parts of the server boil the liquid, and then the resulting pairs are condensed on the heat exchanger above to create a constant, passive cooling cycle.
“It maintains chips with minimal energy waste, significantly reducing electricity consumption and carbon dioxide emissions of data centers,” Bucci explains. “Data centers emit as much CO2 as the entire air industry. By 2040, they will constitute over 10 percent of emissions.”
Supporting students
Bucci claims that working with students is the most satisfying part of his work. “They have such a great passion and competence. Motivating is working with people who have the same passion as you.”
“My students are not afraid to discover new ideas,” adds Bucci. “They almost never stop from the obstacle – sometimes to the extent that you have to slow down and put them back on the right track.”
Running a red laboratory in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Bucci tries to provide students with independence and support.
“We don't educate students, we educate future researchers,” says Bucci. “I think that the most important part of our work is not only to provide tools, but also to ensure confidence and self -sufficient approach to solving problems. These can be business problems, problems with experiments, problems with colleagues from the laboratory.”
Some of the more unique experiments BUCCI require them to collect measurements from them, while falling freely on the plane to achieve zero gravity.
“Space Research is a great fantasy of all children,” says Bucci, who joins students in experiments about twice a year. “This is very funny and inspiring research for students. Zero G gives a new look at life.”
Use of AI
Bucci is also excited to include artificial intelligence in his field. In 2023, he was a co -existing project of many universities of the research initiative (Muri) in thermal science devoted exclusively to machine learning. In a nod to the promise of AI in his field, Bucci also recently founded a magazine called AI thermal fluids To contain research progress based on AI.
“Our community does not have a home for people who want to develop machine learning techniques,” says Bucci. “We wanted to create a way for people in the field of computer science and thermal science to cooperate, to make progress. I think we really have to introduce IT specialists to our community to speed up this process.”
BUCCI also believes that AI can be used to process huge data drawings collected using new experimental techniques that he has developed, as well as for modeling researchers of phenomena cannot yet study.
“It is possible that AI will give us the opportunity to understand things that cannot be observed, or at least lead us in the dark when we try to find the basic causes of many problems,” says Bucci.
