System Miniaturization
The concept of scaling up is well known to engineers. Smaller scale units are built and tested and the results are used to design and build larger or even full-scale systems. System miniaturization is not a matter of scaling down. Rather, first principles and experience of similar miniature systems must be used to design new ones. PNNL has years of experience in doing this for a range of microchemical and thermal systems. For instance such things as flow regimes, surface effects and molecular dynamics are considered at nano/micro levels.
