Physcial Sciences Division
Staff Awards & Honors

October 2019

AJ Krzysko Receives DOE Graduate Student Award

His research furthers the study of complex fluid suspensions using x-ray scattering

AJ Krzysko

Anthony "AJ" Krzysko, a Washington State University student currently working at PNNL under the Distinguished Graduate Research Program, has received a DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) award. Kryzsko's project will use x-ray scattering measurements to study changes in particle properties and fluid response for non-radioactive slurries that mimic aspects of the complex solutions prevalent in Hanford tank wastes.

Relationships between suspended particles in tank waste change when the solutions are moved or pumped. Among other things, these changes alter the viscosity of the solution, complicating the engineering clean-up effort. An understanding of how viscosity and other parameters are influenced by diverse properties like non-spherical particle shapes could ultimately make clean-up faster and more efficient.

Other applications go beyond Hanford Site waste, Krzysko said. "Being able to confidently predict how particle shape and size affects a fluid is important for any field that has flow as part of its processing-like water treatment, polymer latex manufacturing, and paper manufacturing."

The idea for Krzysko's novel approach came from the combination of his background at DOE's Interfacial Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials (IDREAM) Energy Frontier Research Center at PNNL and his time at the National School for Neutron and X-ray Scattering.

The DOE SCGSR award funds Krzysko to spend a year researching at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. He'll be using small-angle x-ray scattering at the Advance Photon Source, a DOE user facility at Argonne.