Convective Flows on Reactive Surfaces in Porous Media

A model for the convective flow in a fluidsaturated porous medium containing a reactive component is considered. This component undergoes an exothermic reaction (modelled by a first order mechanism) on an impermeable bounding surface, the resulting heat released driving the convective flow. Large Rayleigh number flow near a stagnation point is treated in detail by first considering the steady states. Multiple solution branches and critical points arising from a hysteresis bifurcation are identified. The form that these solution branches take depends on whether or not the effects of reactant consumption are included. An initialvalue problem is then discussed. This shows that both the lower (slow reaction) and upper (fast reaction) solution branches are stable (and the ultimate state of the system). When the parameter values are such that there is no steady state, the solution develops a finitetime singularity, the nature of which is analysed.     

Backward Free Convection Boundary Layers in Porous Media

The well known steady free convection forward boundary layer (FBL) flows ascending over a heated upwards projecting semi-infinite flat plate embedded in a fluid saturated porous medium are compared in this paper to their less well known backward (BBL) counterparts descending over a cooled (also upwards projecting!) semi-infinite flat plate. The circumstance that the definite edge of the plate (x = 0) in the former case is a leading edge and in the latter one a trailing edge, leads to substantially different mathematical and physical features of the FBL and BBL flows, respectively. The paper considers under this aspect the case of similar flows corresponding to surface temperature distributions which are power-law functions of the distance x from the definite edge. For permeable plates the effect of an adequate lateral suction and injection of the fluid is also taken into account. The detailed investigation, however, is restricted to the particular values m = +1 and m = –1/3 of the power-law exponent m, where both FBL and BBL solutions are available in exact analytic form. For each of these values, both exponentially and algebraically decaying BBL solutions were found. In addition, the existence of an exact algebraic BBL solution valid for any value of m is reported.     

A Note on Local Thermal Non-equilibrium in Porous Media and Heat Flux Bifurcation Phenomenon in Porous Media

This work address a number of fundamental issues and concepts related to local thermal non-equilibrium and the heat flux bifurcation phenomenon in porous media. Different types of heat flux bifurcation phenomenon are discussed in relation to previous works by the authors.     

Porous Media and the Bénard–Marangoni Problem

The Rayleigh–Bénard instability for a clear fluid has its equivalent for a liquid saturated porous matrix. The phenomenological Darcy momentum law cannot give rise by itself to an instability analogous to that of Bénard–Marangoni, but the Brinkman model at least allows it. A critical Marangoni number exists leading to cellullar patterns and, for realistic values of the permeability, it is proportional to the inverse of this last parameter.     

Evaporation and Condensation Fronts in Porous Media

Flow of a fluid through a porous medium is considered with allowance for heat conduction. Both fronts at which the liquid is transformed into steam or a liquid-steam mixture and fronts with inverse transformations are studied. The evolutionarity conditions of these fronts are considered and a model of their structure is proposed.     

Boiling in Porous Media: Model and Simulations

We present a modelization of the heat and mass transfers within a porous medium, which takes into account phase transitions. Classical equations are derived for the mass conservation equation, whereas the equation of energy relies on an entropy balance adapted to the case of a rigid porous medium. The approximation of the solution is obtained using a finite volume scheme coupled with the management of phase transitions. This model is shown to apply in the case of an experiment of heat generation in a porous medium. The vapor phase appearance is well reproduced by the simulations, and the size of the two-phase region is correctly predicted. A result of this study is the evidence of the discrepancy between the air – water capillary and relative permeability curves and water – water vapor ones.     

Coriolis Effects on Filtration Law in Rotating Porous Media

We investigate the filtration law of incompressible viscous Newtonian fluids in rigid non-inertial porous media, for example, rotating porous media. The filtration law is obtained by upscaling the flow at the pore scale. We use the method of multiple scale expansions which gives rigorously the macroscopic behaviour without any prerequisite on the form of the macroscopic equations. For finite Ekman numbers the filtration law is shown to resemble a Darcy's law, but with a non-symmetric permeability tensor which depends on the angular velocity of the porous matrix. We obtain the filtration analog of the Hall effect. For large Ekman numbers the filtration law is a small correction to the classical Darcy's law. The corrector is antisymmetric. In this case we recover a structure of law which is similar to phenomenological laws introduced in the literature, but with a dissimilar effective coefficient.     

Radiative Effect on Natural Convection Flows in Porous Media

A regular two-parameter perturbation analysis based upon the boundary layer approximation is presented here to study the radiative effects of both first- and second-order resistances due to a solid matrix on the natural convection flows in porous media. Four different flows have been studied, those adjacent to an isothermal surface, a uniform heat flux surface, a plane plume and the flow generated from a horizontal line energy source on a vertical adiabatic surface. The first-order perturbation quantities are presented for all these flows. Numerical results for the four conditions with various radiation parameters are tabulated.     

High-Velocity Laminar and Turbulent Flow in Porous Media

We model high-velocity flow in porous media with the multiple scale homogenization technique and basic fluid mechanics. Momentum and mechanical energy theorems are derived. In idealized porous media inviscid irrotational flow in the pores and wall boundary layers give a pressure loss with a power of 3/2 in average velocity. This model has support from flow in simple model media. In complex media the flow separates from the solid surface. Pressure loss effects of flow separation, wall and free shear layers, pressure drag, flow tube velocity and developing flow are discussed by using phenomenological arguments. We propose that the square pressure loss in the laminar Forchheimer equation is caused by development of strong localized dissipation zones around flow separation, that is, in the viscous boundary layer in triple decks. For turbulent flow, the resulting pressure loss due to average dissipation is a power 2 term in velocity.     

Surfactant Concentration and End Effects on Foam Flow in Porous Media

Foaming injected gas is a useful and promising technique for achieving mobility control in porous media. Typically, such foams are aqueous. In the presence of foam, gas and liquid flow behavior is determined by bubble size or foam texture. The thin-liquid films that separate foam into bubbles must be relatively stable for a foam to be finely textured and thereby be effective as a displacing or blocking agent. Film stability is a strong function of surfactant concentration and type. This work studies foam flow behavior at a variety of surfactant concentrations using experiments and a numerical model. Thus, the foam behavior examined spans from strong to weak.Specifically, a suite of foam displacements over a range of surfactant concentrations in a roughly 7m², one-dimensional sandpack are monitored using X-ray computed tomography (CT). Sequential pressure taps are employed to measure flow resistance. Nitrogen is the gas and an alpha olefin sulfonate (AOS 1416) in brine is the foamer. Surfactant concentrations studied vary from 0.005 to 1wt%. Because foam mobility depends strongly upon its texture, a bubble population balance model is both useful and necessary to describe the experimental results thoroughly and self consistently. Excellent agreement is found between experiment and theory.     

Some Considerations on Modeling Heat and Mass Transfer in Porous Media

In this paper some considerations are presented about the equations needed to set up a model of the process of heat and mass transfer in porous media. A clear classification is made of the various types of equations used and of their physical meaning. Special attention is paid to the thermodynamic equilibrium equations and to their derivation since they are too often taken for granted. The importance of the various transport mechanisms (of mass and energy) is analyzed and the consequences that can arise when some term is neglected are indicated.     

Heterogeneity Effects on Evaporation-Induced Halite and Gypsum Co-precipitation in Porous Media

Understanding evaporation from porous media in the presence of soluble salts plays a key role in describing many environmental processes. Several studies done in this field led to a wide acceptance that the prediction of soil salinization driven by evaporation from the unsaturated zone and mainly encountered in arid and semiarid regions is a challenging task because of the temporal and spatial variabilities of soil rocks combined with different interactions between the porous medium and the atmosphere. In this work, we present a reactive transport model developed with the aim of describing the processes of evaporation, salt accumulation and precipitation. We took the model presented in our previous paper (Jambhekar et al. in Transp Porous Media 114:341–369, 2016) as the basis and developed it with the required geochemical model to account for evaporative salt co-precipitation. The salts considered in this work are halite (NaCl) and gypsum (CaSO\(_{4}\cdot 2\mathrm{H}_{2}\)O). We focus particularly on the influence of spatial heterogeneities in the porous medium on the dynamics of the physical processes. In the numerical simulations performed in this work, we distinguished different heterogeneity configurations. The results show that the drying from heterogeneous porous media initially affects the coarser pores, where the salt crystals first appear.     

Effect of Vibrations on Pore Fluid Distribution in Porous Media

Understanding the role of shuttle vibrations in pore fluid distribution is an essential task in the exploration of plant growth in root modules aboard space flights. Results from experimental investigations are reported in this paper on the distribution of immiscible fluid phases in glass beads under vibrations. Hexadecane, a petroleum compound immiscible with and lighter than water, was used in the experiments. The higher freezing point of Hexadecane (18 °C) allowed the solidification of the entrapped blobs in the presence of water in porous media, so that their size distribution can be obtained. van Genuchten function, commonly used to express moisture retention curves, is found to be an adequate fit for blob size distribution at residual saturation. The effect of vibrations on the fate (mobilization, stranding, or breakup) of a solitary ganglion in porous media was studied using a network model. A mobility criterion considering viscous, gravity, and capillary forces was developed to determine the fate of a solitary ganglion in a porous medium. It is concluded that the effect of vibrations is to increase the likelihood of breakup and mobilization of blobs entrapped in porous media at residual saturation. The pore fluid distributions after vibrations are less uniform than those before vibrations.     

Macro-Scale Dynamic Effects in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Porous Media

It is known that the classical capillary pressure-saturation relationship may be deficient under non-equilibrium conditions when large saturation changes may occur. An extended relationship has been proposed in the literature which correlates the rate of change of saturation to the difference between the phase pressures and the equilibrium capillary pressure. This linear relationship contains a damping coefficient, \tau, that may be a function of saturation. The extended relationship is examined at the macro-scale through simulations using the two-phase simulator MUFTE-UG. In these simulations, it is assumed that the traditional equilibrium relationship between the water saturation and the difference in fluid pressures holds locally. Steady-state and dynamic numerical experiments are performed where a non-wetting phase displaces a wetting phase in homogeneous and heterogeneous domains with varying boundary conditions, domain size, and soil parameters. From these simulations the damping coefficient can be identified as a (non-linear) function of the water saturation. It is shown that the value of increases with an increased domain size and/or with decreased intrinsic permeability. Also, the value of for a domain with a spatially correlated random distribution of intrinsic permeability is compared to a homogeneous domain with equivalent permeability; they are shown to be almost equal.     

Role of Thermal Diffusion on Heat and Mass Transfer in Porous Media

In this paper, thermal diffusion phenomena in a porous cavity are investigated. The Brinkman model, coupled with the energy and the mass balance equations was solved numerically using a finite element techniques. A two-component system was included in the model. Different models were investigated to demonstrate the importance of the Soret effect with the presence of gravity vector. We do not take into consideration the pressure effect in the thermal diffusion. Even with such simplification to the problem, results reveal that the thermal diffusion is important and drives a strong convection. A series of convection cells are observed and steady-state solutions are obtained. Asymmetric solutions are obtained for various cases of dual-porosity porous media. Variations in the gravity vector indicated that the convection patterns, as well as the role of Soret coefficient, are profoundly impacted. Finally, the importance of including thermal diffusion in petroleum reservoir simulation is discussed.     

On the Validity of Darcy's Law for Stable High-Concentration Displacements in Granular Porous Media

Recently, it has been suggested that Darcy's Law might not be applicable for modelling miscible, density-dependent flow in porous media. To investigate this, three sets of careful laboratory column experiments were performed on coarse and medium sands, consisting of upward displacement of water by sodium chloride solutions with concentrations ranging from 5 to 200g/l. Data on salt concentrations and water pressures were collected in horizontal transects along the flow direction. Salt concentration data were also collected in the influent and exit lines. The experimental data were analysed using a simplified approach based on Darcy's Law alone, applied with the assumption of a sharp interface. Darcy's Law was used to estimate porous medium permeability by fitting predictions to experimental data. Consistent estimates of permeability were obtained for each set of experiments. The results indicate that Darcy's Law adequately describes high concentration displacements through saturated coarse- and medium-grained porous media.     

Modeling Transverse Dispersion and Variable Density Flow in Porous Media

A two-dimensional numerical model is used to study the nonlinear behavior of density gradients on transverse dispersion. Numerical simulations are conducted using d ³ f, a computer code for simulation of density-dependent flow in porous media. Considering a density-stratified horizontal flow in a heterogeneous porous media, a series of simulations is carried out to examine the effect of the density gradient on macro-scale transverse dispersivity. Changing salt concentration significantly affects fluid properties. This physical behavior of the fluid involves a non-linearity in modeling the interaction between salt and fresh water. It is concluded that the large-scale transport properties for high density flow deviate significantly from the tracer case due to the spatial variation of permeability, described by statistical parameters, at the local-scale. Indeed, the presence of vertical flow velocities induced by permeability variations is responsible for the reduction of the mixing zone width in the steady state in the case of a high density gradient. Uncertainties in the model simulations are studied in terms of discretization errors, boundary conditions, and convergence of ensemble averaging. With respect to the results, the gravity number appears to be the controlling parameter for dispersive flux. In addition, the applicability and limitations of the nonlinear model of Hassanizadeh (1990) and Hassanizadeh and Leijnse (1995) (Adv Water Resour 18(4):203–215, 1995) in heterogeneous porous media are investigated. We found that the main cause of the nonlinear behavior of dispersion, which is the interaction between density contrast and vertical velocity, needs to be explicitly accounted for in a macro-scale model.     

Propagation and Evolution of Wave Fronts in Two-Phase Porous Media

An investigation is made into the propagation and evolution of wave fronts in a porous medium which is intended to contain two phases: the porous solid, referred to as the skeleton, and the fluid within the interconnected pores formed by the skeleton. In particular, the microscopic density of each real material is assumed to be unchangeable, while the macroscopic density of each phase may change, associated with the volume fractions. A two-phase porous medium model is concisely introduced based on the work by de Boer. Propagation conditions and amplitude evolution of the discontinuity waves are presented by use of the idea of surfaces of discontinuity, where the wave front is treated as a surface of discontinuity. It is demonstrated that the saturation condition entails certain restrictions between the amplitudes of the longitudinal waves in the solid and fluid phases. Two propagation velocities are attained upon examining the existence of the discontinuity waves. It is found that a completely coupled longitudinal wave and a pure transverse wave are realizable in the two-phase porous medium. The discontinuity strength of the pore-pressure may be determined by the amplitude of the coupled longitudinal wave. In the case of homogeneous weak discontinuities, explicit evolution equations of the amplitudes for two types of discontinuity waves are derived.     

关于渗流中流线不封闭的特性和条件

本文对于流体在多孔介质中流动的特性进行理论研究和数值计算，提出两个关于渗流中流线不封闭的特性和条件，得到了在一般工程实际情况中的多孔介质区域内部不存在封闭流线的结论。本文以突变截面圆管中不可压缩渗流为算例，利用半人工瞬变方法进行数值计算，得到流体在充满多孔介质的突扩截面圆管和突缩截面圆管中流动时关于速度分布和压力分布的结果。由此表明，在突变截面附近的渗流区域中不存在回流和分离流，也不存在封闭的流线。渗流的这些流动特性不同于在无多孔介质的空间区域中的流动特性。     

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.