Flow Regimes in Packed Beds of Spheres from Pre-Darcy to Turbulent

Characteristics of flow regimes in porous media, along the processes of energy dissipation in each regime, are critical for applications of such media. The current work presents new experimental data for water flow in packed steel spheres of 1- and 3-mm diameters. The porosity of the porous media was about 35 % for both cases. The extensive dataset covered a broad range of flow Reynolds number such that several important flow regimes were encountered, including the elusive pre-Darcy regime, which is rarely or never seen in porous-media literature and turbulent regime. When compared to previous information, the results of this study are seen to add to the divergence of available data on pressure drop in packed beds of spheres. The divergence was also present in the coefficients of Ergun equation and in the Kozeny–Carman constant. The porous media of the current work were seen to exhibit different values of permeability and Forchheimer coefficient in each flow regime. The current data correlated well using the friction factor based on the permeability (measured in the Darcy regime) and the Reynolds number based on the same length scale. An attempt was made to apply recent theoretical results regarding the applicability of the quadratic and cubic Forchheimer corrections in the strong and weak inertia regime.     

On the Permeability of Fractal Tube Bundles

The permeability of a porous medium is strongly affected by its local geometry and connectivity, the size distribution of the solid inclusions, and the pores available for flow. Since direct measurements of the permeability are time consuming and require experiments that are not always possible, the reliable theoretical assessment of the permeability based on the medium structural characteristics alone is of importance. When the porosity approaches unity, the permeability?Cporosity relationships represented by the Kozeny?CCarman equations and Archie??s law predict that permeability tends to infinity and thus they yield unrealistic results if specific area of the porous media does not tend to zero. The aim of this article is the evaluation of the relationships between porosity and permeability for a set of fractal models with porosity approaching unity and a finite permeability. It is shown that the tube bundles generated by finite iterations of the corresponding geometric fractals can be used to model porous media where the permeability?Cporosity relationships are derived analytically. Several examples of the tube bundles are constructed, and the relevance of the derived permeability?Cporosity relationships is discussed in connection with the permeability measurements of highly porous metal foams reported in the literature.     

Extension of the Darcy�CForchheimer Law for Shear-Thinning Fluids and Validation via Pore-Scale Flow Simulations

Flow of non-Newtonian fluids through porous media at high Reynolds numbers is often encountered in chemical, pharmaceutical and food, as well as petroleum and groundwater engineering, and in many other industrial applications. Under the majority of operating conditions typically explored, the dependence of pressure drops on flow rate is non-linear and the development of models capable of describing accurately this dependence, in conjunction with non-trivial rheological behaviors, is of paramount importance. In this work, pore-scale single-phase flow simulations conducted on synthetic two-dimensional porous media are performed via computational fluid dynamics for both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids and the results are used for the extension and validation of the Darcy?CForchheimer law, herein proposed for shear-thinning fluid models of Cross, Ellis and Carreau. The inertial parameter ?? is demonstrated to be independent of the viscous properties of the fluids. The results of flow simulations show the superposition of two contributions to pressure drops: one, strictly related to the non-Newtonian properties of the fluid, dominates at low Reynolds numbers, while a quadratic one, arising at higher Reynolds numbers, is dependent on the porous medium properties. The use of pore-scale flow simulations on limited portions of the porous medium is here proposed for the determination of the macroscale-averaged parameters (permeability K, inertial coefficient ?? and shift factor ??), which are required for the estimation of pressure drops via the extended Darcy?CForchheimer law. The method can be applied for those fluids which would lead to critical conditions (high pressures for low permeability media and/or high flow rates) in laboratory tests.     

An experimental study of electrorheological fluid flow through a packed bed of glass beads

This paper shows that pressure drop-flow rate performance of an electrorheological (ER) fluid flowing through a packed bed of glass beads is consistent with a modified Ergun equation for yield stress flow through a packed bed. ER fluids are of scientific and engineering interest due to the sensitivity of their rheological properties on the applied electric field. As far as we know ER fluids have not been studied for flows through porous media. In this work a silica particle–silicone oil suspension is pumped through a rectangular packed bed of glass beads with applied electric fields. The silica particles are observed to form fibrous structures parallel to the electric field that stretch between the beads and extend between the electrodes. The pressure drop-flow rate performance agrees well with the expected performance calculated from a modified Ergun equation for a yield stress fluid flow through the packed bed with the viscosity and yield stress as functions of the applied electric field.     

Application of X-ray CT investigation of CO<Subscript>2</Subscript>–brine flow in porous media

A clear understanding of two-phase flows in porous media is important for investigating CO₂ geological storage. In this study, we conducted an experiment of CO₂/brine flow process in porous media under sequestration conditions using X-ray CT technique. The flow properties of relative permeability, porosity heterogeneity, and CO₂ saturation were observed in this experiment. The porous media was packed with glass beads having a diameter of 0.2 mm. The porosity distribution along the flow direction is heterogeneous owing to the diameter and shape of glass beads along the flow direction. There is a relationship between CO₂ saturation and porosity distribution, which changes with different flow rates and fractional flows. The heterogeneity of the porous media influences the distribution of CO₂; moreover, gravity, fractional flows, and flow rates influence CO₂ distribution and saturation. The relative permeability curve was constructed using the steady-state method. The results agreed well with the relative permeability curve simulated using pore-network model.     

Stress-Dependent Porosity and Permeability of Porous Rocks Represented by a Mechanistic Elastic Cylindrical Pore-Shell Model

The stress dependency of the porosity and permeability of porous rocks is described theoretically by representing the preferential flow paths in heterogeneous porous rocks by a bundle of tortuous cylindrical elastic tubes. A Lamé-type equation is applied to relate the radial displacement of the internal wall of the cylindrical elastic tubes and the porosity to the variation of the pore fluid pressure. The variation of the permeability of porous rocks by effective stress is determined by incorporating the radial displacement of the internal wall of the cylindrical elastic tubes into the Kozeny–Carman relationship. The fully analytical solutions of the mechanistic elastic pore-shell model developed by combining the Lamé and Kozeny–Carman equations are shown to lead to very accurate correlations of the stress dependency of both the porosity and the permeability of porous rocks.

     

Microstructural effects on the permeability of periodic fibrous porous media

An analytical–numerical approach is presented for computing the macroscopic permeability of fibrous porous media taking into account their microstructure. A finite element (FE) based model for viscous, incompressible flow through a regular array of cylinders/fibers is employed for predicting the permeability associated with this type of media. High resolution data, obtained from our simulations, are utilized for validating the commonly used semi-analytical models of drag relations from which the permeability is often derived. The effect of porosity, or volume fraction, on the macroscopic permeability is studied. Also microstructure parameters like particle shape, orientation and unit cell staggered angle are varied. The results are compared with the Carman–Kozeny (CK) equation and the Kozeny factor (often assumed to be constant) dependence on the microstructural parameters is reported and used as an attempt to predict a closed form relation for the permeability in a variety of structures, shapes and wide range of porosities.     

Poiseuille-Number-Based Kozeny–Carman Model for Computation of Pore Shape Factors on Arbitrary Cross Sections

Porous media characterization is crucial to engineering projects where the pore shape has impact on performance gains. Membrane filters, sportswear fabrics, and tertiary oil recovery are a few examples. Kozeny–Carman (K–C) models are one of the most frequently used to understand, for instance, the relation between porosity, permeability, and other small-scale parameters. However, they have limitations, such as the inability to capture the correct dependence of permeability on porosity, the imperfect handling of the linear and nonlinear effects yielded by its fundamental quantities, and the insufficiency of geometrical parameters to predict the permeability correctly. In this paper, we cope with the problem of determining shape factors for generic geometries that represent sundry porous media configurations. Specifically, we propose a method that embeds the Poiseuille number into the classical K–C equation and returns a substitute shape factor term for its original counterpart. To the best of our knowledge, the existing formulations are unable to obtain shape factors for pores whose geometry is beyond the regular ones. We apply a Galerkin-based integral (GBI) method that determines shape factors for generic cross sections of pore channels. The approach is tested on straight capillaries with arbitrary cross sections subject to steady single-phase flow under the laminar regime. We show that shape factors for basic geometries known from experimental results are replicable exactly. Besides, we provide shape factors with precision up to 4 digits for a class of geometries of interest. As a way to demonstrate the applicability of the GBI approach, we report a case study that determines shape factors for 19 generic individual pore sections of a laboratory experiment involving flow rate measurements in an industrial arrangement of a water-agar packed bed. Porosity, flow behavior, and velocity distributions determined numerically achieve a narrow agreement with experimental values. The findings of this study provide parameters that can help to design new devices or mechanisms that depend on arbitrary pore shapes, as well as to characterize fluid flows in heterogeneous porous media.

     

Application of the Carman–Kozeny Correlation to a High‐Porosity and Anisotropic Consolidated Medium: The Compressed Expanded Natural Graphite

The Carman–Kozeny correlation is applied to a medium which is consolidated, highly porous and anisotropic: the expanded then compressed natural graphite. The effective textural properties (i.e. the mean pore diameter, porosity and tortuosity) have been measured by a mercury porosimeter and a heterogeneous diffusion cell. The texture and the permeability (according to the Darcy's law) measured for the two main directions of these orthotropic porous media change over a very wide range depending on their apparent mass densities. Experimental data show that only a part of the total porosity participates in the gas flow in steady state conditions.     

On Determining the Percolation Reynolds Number and the Characteristic Linear Dimension for Ideal and Fictitious Porous Media

Various versions of representations of the percolation Reynolds number for porous media with isotropic and anisotropic flow properties are considered. The formulas are derived and the variants are analyzed with reference to model porous media with a periodic microstructure formed by systems of capillaries and packings consisting of spheres of constant diameter (ideal and fictitious porous media, respectively). A generalization of the Kozeny formula is given for determining the capillary diameter in an ideal porous medium equivalent to a fictitious medium with respect to permeability and porosity and it is shown that the capillary diameter is nonuniquely determined. Relations for recalculating values of the Reynolds number determined by means of formulas proposed earlier are given and it is shown that taking the microstructure of porous media into account, as proposed in [1, 2], makes it possible to explain the large scatter of the numerical values of the Reynolds number in processing the experimental data.     

Numerical Approach of the Permeability of a Macroporous Bioceramic with Interconnected Spherical Pores

Manufacturing a hybrid bone substitute requires a dynamic culture of the cells preliminarily seeded in a scaffold through a flow of physiological fluid. The velocity, pressure, and the distribution of fluid flow in this kind of macroporous medium are the important keys. Because of the difficulties in determining these parameters by experiment, a numerical approach has been chosen. One of the primary step of this study consists in the determination of permeability K. In this article, two types of structure of macroporous bioceramics are concerned. One is the interconnected pore spheres arranged either simple cubic, body-centered cubic or face-centered cubic systems. The other is the interconnected pore spheres randomly arranged. Based on Darcy??s law, the permeability K was calculated for many cases (type, porosity) by simulating the fluid flow through a small representative volume. These results are compared with some previous models such as Ergun, Carman?CKozeny, Rumpf?CGupte, and Du Plessis. The limits of Darcy??s law and the above-mentioned models have been determined using numerical simulation. The result showed that the porous media with spherical interconnected pores of BCC systems can be used to replace a complex random system in a range of porosity from 0.71 to 0.76 (i.e., porosity of our scaffolds). This assumption is validated for a pressure gradient lower the 1,000?Pa m^?C1 and a simple polynomial relation linking permeability and porosity (0.71?C0.76) has been established.     

Extrudate Trilobe Catalysts and Loading Effects on Pressure Drop and Dynamic Liquid Holdup in Porous Media of Trickle Bed Reactors

The hydrodynamics of concurrent gas-liquid downflow through a porous media of fixed bed reactor has been studied experimentally in a range of trickling flow rates. A pilot bed is packed with industrial spherical and extrudate trilobe catalysts. The industrial trilobe catalysts are packed in a bed using two different methods: random close or dense packing and random sock packing. The experiments are performed for single phase in the cases of wet and dry packed beds and for two-phase flow conditions. The comparisons of pressure drops as well as liquid holdup are carried out for the above three different porous media, random close, dense packing and random sock packing. It is shown that the pressure drop of the dense loaded bed is higher than that of spherical particles which have approximately the same porosity. The results also revealed that the bed porosity, shape and contact points of the loaded catalyst have significant effects on the dynamic liquid holdup of the TBRs. Finally, a new correlation was developed for dynamic liquid holdup and pressure drop calculation for trilobe dense and sock catalyst beds and beds which are loaded with spherical particles.     

孤立波与多孔介质结构物的非线性相互作用

基于精确至Ｏ（εμ＾２,μ＾４）的多孔介质无压渗流模型方程和均匀流体质波动的Ｂｏｕｓｓｉｎｅｓｑ方程,本文对孤立波与多孔介质结构物的相互作用了较系统的数值实验。控制方程采用基于有限差分方程离散,在时域上采用了预估－校正方法进行了时间积分。在求解演化方程的过程中,引入“内迭代”过程实现流体域和多孔介质交界面的连接条件。结果表明孤立波在多孔介质上的反射与在不可渗透的界面上的反射类似,形成反向的孤立波但     

Contribution to the Modelling of Coupled Heat and Mass Transfers on 3D Real Structure of Heterogeneous Building Materials: Application to Hemp Concrete

Hydraulic flow, electrical flow and the passage of elastic waves through porous media are all linked by electrokinetic processes. In its simplest form, the passage of elastic waves through the porous medium causes fluid to flow through that medium and that flow gives rise to an electrical streaming potential and electrical counter-current. These processes are frequency-dependent and governed by coupling coefficients which are themselves frequency-dependent. The link between fluid pressure and fluid flow is described by dynamic permeability, which is characterised by the hydraulic coupling coefficient (C_hp). The link between fluid pressure and electrical streaming potential is characterised by the streaming potential coefficient (C_sp). While the steady-state values of such coefficients are well studied and understood, their frequency dependence is not. Previous work has been confined to unconsolidated and disaggregated materials such as sands, gravels and soils. In this work, we present an apparatus for measuring the hydraulic and streaming potential coefficients of high porosity, high permeability consolidated porous media as a function of frequency. The apparatus operates in the range 1 Hz to 2 kHz with a sample of 10 mm diameter and 5–30 mm in length. The full design and validation of the apparatus are described together with the experimental protocol it uses. Initial data are presented for three samples of Boise sandstone, which present as dispersive media with the critical transition frequency of 918.3?±?99.4 Hz. The in-phase and in-quadrature components of the measured hydraulic and streaming potential coefficients have been compared to the Debye-type dispersion model as well as theoretical models based on bundles of capillary tubes and porous media. Initial results indicate that the dynamic permeability data present an extremely good fit to the capillary bundle and Debye-type dispersion models, while the streaming potential coefficient presents an extremely good fit to all of the models up to the critical transition frequency, but diverges at higher frequencies. The streaming potential coefficient data are best fitted by the Pride model and its Walker and Glover simplification. Characteristic pore size values calculated from the measured critical transition frequency fell within 1.73% of independent measures of this parameter, while the values calculated directly from the Packard model showed an underestimation by about 12%.

     

Optical measurements of pore geometry and fluid velocity in a bed of irregularly packed spheres

Imaging methods are proposed for the characterisation of liquid flows through transparent porous media of matched refractive index. The methods are based on the analysis of laser-illuminated slices, and specialized for the case in which the porous medium is composed of irregularly packed spheres. They include algorithms for the reconstruction of the three-dimensional (3D) sphere arrangement based on a laser scan of the packed bed, particle tracking velocimetry applied to the motions of micro-tracers in a laser-illuminated plane, and techniques for the co-registration of geometry and velocity measurements acquired from different slices. The methods are applied to a cylindrical flow cell filled with mono-sized spheres and operated at Reynolds number Re = 28. The data produced include the full 3D geometry of the packed spheres assembly, the 2D fluid velocity field in the axial centre-plane of the flow cell, and the corresponding porosity and velocity distributions.     

Effective Correlation of Apparent Gas Permeability in Tight Porous Media

Gaseous flow regimes through tight porous media are described by rigorous application of a unified Hagen–Poiseuille-type equation. Proper implementation is accomplished based on the realization of the preferential flow paths in porous media as a bundle of tortuous capillary tubes. Improved formulations and methodology presented here are shown to provide accurate and meaningful correlations of data considering the effect of the characteristic parameters of porous media including intrinsic permeability, porosity, and tortuosity on the apparent gas permeability, rarefaction coefficient, and Klinkenberg gas slippage factor.     

Experimental Study on the Effective Particle Diameter of a Packed Bed with Non-Spherical Particles

An experimental study is conducted to determine the characteristics of frictional pressure drops of fluid flow in porous beds packed with non-spherical particles. The objective is to examine the applicability of the Ergun equation to flow resistance assessment for packed beds with non-spherical particles. The experiments are carried out on the POMECOFL facility at KTH. Hollow spheres and cylinders are used to pack the beds. Either water or air is chosen as the working fluid. The experimental data show that the Ergun equation is applicable to all the test beds if the effective particle diameter used in the equation is chosen as the equivalent diameter of the particles, which is the product of Sauter mean diameter and shape factor of the particles in each bed.     

Pore-Scale Simulation of Shear Thinning Fluid Flow Using Lattice Boltzmann Method

The present work attempts to identify the roles of flow and geometric variables on the scaling factor which is a necessary parameter for modeling the apparent viscosity of non-Newtonian fluid in porous media. While idealizing the porous media microstructure as arrays of circular and square cylinders, the present study uses multi-relaxation time lattice Boltzmann method to conduct pore-scale simulation of shear thinning non-Newtonian fluid flow. Variation in the size and inclusion ratio of the solid cylinders generates wide range of porous media with varying porosity and permeability. The present study also used stochastic reconstruction technique to generate realistic, random porous microstructures. For each case, pore-scale fluid flow simulation enables the calculation of equivalent viscosity based on the computed shear rate within the pores. It is observed that the scaling factor has strong dependence on porosity, permeability, tortuosity and the percolation threshold, while approaching the maximum value at the percolation threshold porosity. The present investigation quantifies and proposes meaningful correlations between the scaling factor and the macroscopic properties of the porous media.