Alessio Scanziani | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Beyond Critical Minerals Targets: Digital Rock Physics as Infrastructure for Secure and Circular Supply Chains

The United Kingdom and Europe are moving rapidly from critical minerals target-setting to implementation. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act and the UK's Vision 2035 create ambitious benchmarks for domestic extraction, processing, recycling, circularity, and supply-chain resilience, but many prospective regional resources remain complex, under-explored, historically worked, or economically marginal. This paper argues that implementation will depend not only on permitting reform and project designation, but also on pre-competitive measurement, modelling, and data infrastructure capable of determining which ores, brines, waste streams, and recycling feedstocks can be processed viably and with lower environmental impact. Digital Rock Physics (DRP) should therefore be understood as enabling infrastructure for resource policy rather than as a specialist laboratory method alone. By combining three-dimensional imaging, correlative chemistry, AI-enabled image analysis, and pore-scale modelling, DRP can connect mineral texture and reactive pathways to decisions about ore characterisation, liberation prediction, leaching, Direct Lithium Extraction, mine-waste valorisation, and battery recycling. The paper sets out a UK-European policy agenda built around translational demonstrators, cross-disciplinary training, a Digital Ore Passport standard, a federated Digital Ore Database, and integrated geo-reactive end stations. Treated as shared implementation infrastructure, DRP could help turn critical minerals strategies into practical routes for supply security, resource efficiency, circularity, and more environmentally responsible development.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2017

An energy-based equilibrium contact angle boundary condition on jagged surfaces for phase-field methods

We consider an energy-based boundary condition to impose an equilibrium wetting angle for the Cahn-Hilliard-Navier-Stokes phase-field model on voxel-set-type computational domains. These domains typically stem from the micro-CT imaging of porous rock and approximate a (on {\mu}m scale) smooth domain with a certain resolution. Planar surfaces that are perpendicular to the main axes are naturally approximated by a layer of voxels. However, planar surfaces in any other directions and curved surfaces yield a jagged/rough surface approximation by voxels. For the standard Cahn-Hilliard formulation, where the contact angle between the diffuse interface and the domain boundary (fluid-solid interface/wall) is 90 degrees, jagged surfaces have no impact on the contact angle. However, a prescribed contact angle smaller or larger than 90 degrees on jagged voxel surfaces is amplified in either direction. As a remedy, we propose the introduction of surface energy correction factors for each fluid-solid voxel face that counterbalance the difference of the voxel-set surface area with the underlying smooth one. The discretization of the model equations is performed with the discontinuous Galerkin method, however, the presented semi-analytical approach of correcting the surface energy is equally applicable to other direct numerical methods such as finite elements, finite volumes, or finite differences, since the correction factors appear in the strong formulation of the model.

physics.flu-dyn↗