Environmental Flow (EnFlo) Laboratory

Established in 1993 with funding from EPSRC, National Power, the Meteorological Office and the University of Surrey, EnFlo is an internationally recognised centre of excellence in atmospheric boundary layer flows and environmental aerodynamics.

Our main objectives

Provide world-leading wind-tunnel facilities in support of research in fluid flow and dispersion to both academy and industry
Undertake research on flow and pollutant dispersion processes in the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, lakes and rivers
Provide training and promote best practice in the use of laboratory modelling techniques in environmental fluid mechanics.

Research projects

Active projects

FUTURE: Fluid dynamics of urban tall-building clusters for resilient built environments

Principal investigator: Dr Marco Placidi

Start date: June 2021

End date: June 2025

Funding amount: ~£1.8 million

MAGIC: Envisaging a world with greener cities

Principal investigator: Professor Alan Robins

Nano-particle dispersion

Completed projects

DIPLOS: Dispersion of localised releases in a street network

Start date: January 2014

End date: August 2017

MODITIC: Modelling the dispersion of toxic industrial chemicals in urban environments

Start date: 2012

End date: 2015

DYCE

Start date: 2009

End date: 2010

SuperGen

Start date: 2006

End date: 2014

DAPPLE: Dispersion of air pollution and penetration into the local environment

Principal investigator: Professor Alan Robins

Start date: 2002

End date: 2010

Collaborative work

Health Protection Agency and the NHS

A series of projects for the HPA (now Public Health England) has been completed within the Micro- and NanoMaterials and Technologies EngD course. The first two covered health and related aspects of waste management and the third, odour, including an unusual example of long range odour transport (from Germany to the UK).

Other works were with Guys and St Thomas’ Hospital and treated the physics of short range dispersion from short, roof top stacks; the case study being emissions from the cyclotron facility at St Thomas’.

CONCAWE

CONCAWE is based in Brussels and commissions environmental research on behalf of its members (mainly petrol-chemical industries). Projects at EnFlo have focussed on near-field dispersion at process plants and, in particular, the use of line integrated concentration measurements around a plant to estimate emission rates of hydrocarbons from leaks and similar sources.

The overall aim was to understand the uncertainties in the resulting estimates and to develop best practice for carrying out such work.

Facilities

We have numerous wind tunnels, including the "EnFlo" meteorological wind tunnel, which is a NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) National Facility within the National Centre for Atmospheric Science's (NCAS) AMOF (Atmospheric Measurements & Observation Facility) and part of the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) National Wind Tunnel Facility (NWTF). The EnFlo tunnel allows experiments to be carried out in controlled conditions simulating Earth's atmosphere and is one of few in the world capable of reproducing a wide range of temperature variations for more realistic meteorological conditions.

Explore our wind tunnels