Porous media, analysis

A microscopic description characterizes the structure of the pores. The objective of a pore-structure analysis is to provide a description that relates to the macroscopic or bulk flow properties. The major bulk properties that need to be correlated with pore description or characterization are the four basic parameters porosity, permeability, tortuosity and connectivity. In studying different samples of the same medium, it becomes apparent that the number of pore sizes, shapes, orientations and interconnections are enormous. Due to this complexity, pore-structure description is most often a statistical distribution of apparent pore sizes. This distribution is apparent because to convert measurements to pore sizes one must resort to models that provide average or model pore sizes. A common approach to defining a characteristic pore size distribution is to model the porous medium as a bundle of straight cylindrical or rectangular capillaries (refer to Figure 2). The diameters of the model capillaries are defined on the basis of a convenient distribution function. 

The material balance is consistent with the results obtained by OSA (S2+S4 in g/100 g). For oil A, the coke zone is very narrow and the coke content is very low (Table III). On the contrary, for all the other oils, the coke content reaches higher values such as 4.3 g/ 100 g (oil B), 2.3 g/ioo g (oil C), 2.5 g/ioo g (oil D), 2.4/100 g (oil E). These organic residues have been studied by infrared spectroscopy and elemental analysis to compare their compositions. The areas of the bands characteristic of C-H bands (3000-2720 cm-1), C=C bands (1820-1500 cm j have been measured. Examples of results are given in Fig. 4 and 5 for oils A and B. An increase of the temperature in the porous medium induces a decrease in the atomic H/C ratio, which is always lower than 1.1, whatever the oil (Table III). Similar values have been obtained in pyrolysis studies (4) Simultaneously to the H/C ratio decrease, the bands characteristics of CH and CH- groups progressively disappear. The absorbance of the aromatic C-n bands also decreases. This reflects the transformation by pyrolysis of the heavy residue into an aromatic product which becomes more and more condensed. Depending on the oxygen consumption at the combustion front, the atomic 0/C ratio may be comprised between 0.1 and 0.3 ... 

Figure 3. Analysis by OSA of samples taken in the porous medium for Oil E.

The Effectiveness Factor Analysis in Terms of Effective Diffusivities First-Order Reactions on Spherical Pellets. Useful expressions for catalyst effectiveness factors may also be developed in terms of the concept of effective diffusivities. This approach permits one to write an expression for the mass transfer within the pellet in terms of a form of Fick s first law based on the superficial cross-sectional area of a porous medium. We thereby circumvent the necessity of developing a detailed mathematical model of the pore geometry and size distribution. This subsection is devoted to an analysis of simultaneous mass transfer and chemical reaction in porous catalyst pellets in terms of the effective diffusivity. In order to use the analysis with confidence, the effective diffusivity should be determined experimentally, since it is difficult to obtain accurate estimates of this parameter on an a priori basis. 

In order to simplify the situation, we assume that our porous sample under investigation covers the bottom of an open straight-walled can and fills it to a height d (Figure 1). Such a sample will exhibit the same areal exhalation rate as a free semi-infinite sample of thickness 2d, as long as the walls and the bottom of the can are impermeable and non-absorbant for radon. A one-dimensional analysis of the diffusion of radon from the sample is perfectly adequate under these conditions. To idealize the conditions a bit further we assume that diffusion is the only transport mechanism of radon out from the sample, and that this diffusive transport is governed by Fick s first law. Fick s law applied to a porous medium says that the areal exhalation rate is proportional to the (radon) concentration gradient in the pores at the sample-air interface... 

A radically new stage of development of lateral models is related to the application of PT methodology. The term percolation was introduced by Broadbent and Hammersley [225] to describe the new class of mathematical problems connected to the analysis of infiltration of liquids or the path of an electrical current through a labyrinth of bonded and nonbonded elements. This theory has become very fashionable in various fields of physics, chemistry, and technical applications (e.g., a problem of displacement of oil from a porous medium [8,223,226,227]). The basics of this theory has been comprehensively discussed in several reviews [121,228-232] and monographs [8,233,234],... 

With the supposition that the slip layer is thin and the slip velocity is constant, various analyses have been developed in the search for the ideal experimental method to define slip. The Mooney analysis (20) for both tube flow and concentric cylinder flow has been applied to a wide range of materials including polymer solutions (21), filled suspensions (22), semisolid foods (23), fruit purees (24), and ketchups (25). Alternate estimates of slip velocity have been determined experimentally from, parallel plate torsion flow (26), from flow data in channels and inclined planes, and from porous medium geometries (8). 

The analysis of shrinkage data reveals important characteristics of the porous medium of concern [1], These characteristics include the onset of cracking... 

Figure 1 shows this solution for 0 < a < 1 and a = 1 D = 0). The parameters used were the same as in the analysis in the next paragraph, see Table 2, except for the concentration and storage coefficient in the porous medium Ci2 = 0, SS2 = 4.6 10-10 and the storage coefficient in the clay, i.e. S3i = 10-6. Figure 1 shows that the model supports the limiting behaviour for a. 

Abstract When subjected to a mechanical loading, the solid phase of a saturated porous medium undergoes a dissolution due to strain-stress concentration effects along the fluid-solid interface. Through a micromechanical analysis, the mechanical affinity is shown to be the driving force of the local dissolution. For cracked porous media, the elastic free energy is a dominant component of this driving force. This allows to predict dissolution-induced creep in such materials. 

Assume that the fibers in a filter are cylindrical they are parallel to each other and are uniformly assembled. Consider cake filtration in which particles are collected with the deposited particles forming a layer of porous structure as shown in Fig. 7.13(a). Thus, to account for the total pressure drop, three basic flow modes are pertinent (1) flow is parallel to the axis of fibers (2) flow is perpendicular to the axis of the cylinder and (3) flow passes through a layer of a homogeneous porous medium. In the analysis of the first two modes given later, Happel s model [Happel, 1959] is used, while for the third mode, Ergun s approach [Ergun, 1952] is used. 

Discuss how the analysis of natural convective flow over a vertical flat plate in a saturated porous medium must be modified if there is a uniform heat flux rather than a uniform temperature at the surface. 

We are not going to deal with all these examples of application of percolation theory to catalysis in this paper. Although the physics of these problems are different the basic numerical and mathematical techniques are very similar. For the deactivation problem discussed here, for example, one starts with a three-dimensional network representation of the catalyst porous structure. Systematic procedures of how to map any disordered porous medium onto an equivalent random network of pore bodies and throats have been developed and detailed accounts can be found in a number of publications ( 8). For the purposes of this discussion it suffices to say that the success of the mapping techniques strongly depends on the availability of quality structural data, such as mercury porosimetry, BET and direct microscopic observations. Of equal importance, however, is the correct interpretation of this data. It serves no purpose to perform careful mercury porosimetry and BET experiments and then use the wrong model (like the bundle of pores) for data analysis and interpretation. 

All these different mechanisms of mass transport through a porous medium can be studied experimentally and theoretically through classical models (Darcy s law, Knudsen diffusion, molecular dynamics, Stefan-Maxwell equations, dusty-gas model etc.) which can be coupled or not with the interactions or even reactions between the solid structure and the fluid elements. Another method for the analysis of the species motion inside a porous structure can be based on the observation that the motion occurs as a result of two or more elementary evolutions that are randomly connected. This is the stochastic way for the analysis of species motion inside a porous body. Some examples that will be analysed here by the stochastic method are the result of the particularisations of the cases presented with the development of stochastic models in Sections 4.4 and 4.5. 

The classic and stochastic methods used for the analysis of liquid flow inside a porous medium are strongly related. These interactions are given by the relationships between the parameters of both types of models. We show here that the analysis of the flow of a liquid through a porous medium, using a stochastic model, can describe some of the parameters used in deterministic models such as ... 

Capillary pressure effects appear to explain the very important 1964 discovery of Bernard and Holm that dispersions could make the mobility of the nonwetting phase essentially independent of the absolute permeability of the porous medium (52). (See above.) Indeed, the theoretical analysis of Khatib, et al., which was corroborated by experiments, gave dispersed-phase mobilities at the upper limiting capillary pressure (for coalescence) that were nearly constant for absolute permeabilities ranging from 7D to ca. 1,000D (41). 

To calculate the reduction in the concentration of surfactant in the fluid by adsorption it is necessary to have an estimation of the inner surface area of the reservoir. This parameter is related to the porosity of the medium and to its permeability. Attempts have been made to correlate these two quantities but the results have been unsuccessful, because there are parameters characteristic of each particular porous medium involved in the description of the problem (14). For our analysis we adopted the approach of Kozeny and Carman (15). These authors defined a parameter called the "equivalent hydraulic radius of the porous medium" which represents the surface area exposed to the fluid per unit volume of rock. They obtained the following relationship between the permeability, k, and the porosity, 0 ... 

A somewhat different interpretation of such phenomena has been given recently by Falls et al. (14). These investigators use energy arguments to account for the work associated with moving lamellae into the constrictions along the bubble train path. Such an approach is attractive from a mechanistic standpoint however, it predicts that the capillary resistance increases with the length of the porous medium, which has not been observed experimentally. Obviously, more extensive analysis and experimentation are required before such pore constriction effects are fully understood and accurately represented. 

Kang, Y. T., and Christensen, R. N. (1995) Combined Heat and Mass Transfer Analysis for Absorption in a Eluted Tube with a Porous Medium in Confined Cross Plow, Proceedings of the 1995 ASME/JSME Thermal Engineering Joint Conference. Part 1 (of 4), Mar 19-24 1995, Maui, HI, USA, Vol. 1, ASME, New York, NY, USA, pp. 251-260. 

Gas relative permeability, Pk, is defined as the permeability of a fluid through a porous medium partially blocked by a second fluid, normalized by the permeability when the pore space is free of this second fluid. This property diminishes at the percolation threshold , at which a significant portion of the pores are still conducting but they do not form a continuous path along the flow direction. It is obvious that only the network model, can provide a satisfactory analysis of the percolation threshold problem. Nicholson et al. [3] introduced a simple network model, and applied it on gas relative permeability [4]. For the gas relative permeability, an explicit approximate analytical relation between the relative permeability and the two network parameters, namely z and the first four moments of, f(r), has been developed, based on the Effective Medium Approximation (EMA) [5]. If a porous... 

In membrane filtration, water-filled pores are frequently encountered and consequently the liquid-solid transition of water is often used for membrane pore size analysis. Other condensates can however also be used such as benzene, hexane, decane or potassium nitrate [68]. Due to the marked curvature of the solid-liquid interface within pores, a freezing (or melting) point depression of the water (or ice) occurs. Figure 4.9a illustrates schematically the freezing of a liquid (water) in a porous medium as a fimction of the pore size. Solidification within a capillary pore can occur either by a mechanism of nucleation or by a progressive penetration of the liquid-solid meniscus formed at the entrance of the pore (Figure 4.9b). 

The term pore-scale implies behavior or analysis performed at a resolution where the void phase and solid phase can be distinguished. At this scale, the void phase is conceptually divided into pores (the larger voids, which provide its volume) and pore throats (constrictions that connect the pores), though the distinction is rarely black and white. In contrast, the continuum-scale approach is usually adopted in engineering practice. Continuum techniques treat the bulk porous medium as a single phase, which in turn requires spatially averaged parameters to be introduced that are intended to capture relevant characteristics of the pore-scale structure. 

The third problem is known as the Saffinan-Taylor instability of a fluid interface for motion of a pair of fluids with different viscosities in a porous medium. It is this instability that leads to the well-known and important phenomenon of viscous fingering. In this case, we first discuss Darcy s law for motion of a single-phase fluid in a porous medium, and then we discuss the instability that occurs because of the displacement of one fluid by another when there is a discontinuity in the viscosity and permeability across an interface. The analysis presented ignores surface-tension effects and is thus valid strictly for miscible displacement. ... 

Problem 12-18. Buoyancy-Driven Instability of a Fluid Layer in a Porous Medium Based on the Darcy-Brinkman Equations. A more complete model for the motion of a fluid in a porous medium is provided by the so-called Darcy Brinkman equations. In the following, we reexamine the conditions for buoyancy-driven instability when the fluid layer is heated from below. We assume that inertia effects can be neglected (this has no effect on the stability analysis as one can see by reexamining the analysis in Section H) and that the Boussinesq approximation is valid so that fluid and solid properties are assumed to be constant except for the density of the fluid. The Darcy Brinkman equations can be written in the form... 

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