Question: what problems do you solve?

Christine Switzer answered on 17 Jun 2011:

Hi imaperson,

Thanks for your question and for the great questions during the chat earlier! I have a couple of interesting problems that I am working on now. I will give you a couple of examples because otherwise I could be typing for hours.

My research team invented a new method for cleaning contaminated land. We burn the contaminants in the soil (the tricky part is getting them to burn and we keep that as a secret between us) and destroy them completely. The soil looks really clean afterwards and if it all works well, the material is inert. The word inert means non-reactive, but it is also used for waste disposal to mean the safest classification. The process cooks the contaminated part of the soil to temperatures of 1000C or more. This is really hot. Water boils at 100C. Candles burn at 600-1400C. Sand is formed into glass at 1900C. One of my students has shown that water moves through the soil very differently after treatment. Instead of slowly moving through the soil, water moves really quickly and does not spread out the way it would in normal soil. I have some ideas as to why and I am running a couple of research projects to test those theories. My research partner and I are running a related project on how to restore life to these soils after treatment. Soil is a living thing. It contains bacteria, fungii, bugs, plants, etc, and probably all of these things get destroyed from the high temperatures. We would like to figure out how to bring these sorts of things back, and in what order we should bring them back, to make the treated soil as healthy as possible.

This work is what got me into underground fires. There are coal fires all over the world that no one has been able to put out. A famous example is Centralia, PA, in the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania . Water does nothing useful to put these fires out. My work with the soil treatment process has me wondering if it is the same thing is happening. I wonder if the water just slips right past the parts that have been burning. If I am right, the next question is how to fix it so the water can work.

These are just two of my projects but hopefully they give you a taste for the sorts of problems that I am working to solve.

Cheers,
Christine