Turbulence is ubiquitous in chemical engineering processes, and provides the major mixing mechanism within many unit operations including chemical reactors. Prediction of turbulent properties is complex and research has been focused on the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) enabling numerical experiments to be performed. Whilst a great deal of progress has been made on the implementation and validation (against experimental data) of CFD codes for single phase flows, extension to multiphase systems remains a major research challenge both in terms of obtaining reliable models and trustworthy experimental data. In this talk, experimental methods are described which enable measurements of energy dissipation to be made within single and multiphase (solid-liquid) flows in model systems using Particle Image Velocimetry.