Pore-scale statistics of flow and transport through porous media

Microscale fluid and particle dynamics in filtration processes in water treatment: A review

The complex filtration processes in water treatment, granular filtration and membrane filtration, often suffer from filter fouling, and the fundamental understanding of microscale fluid and particle dynamics is a key to improving filtration efficiency and stability. In this review, we identify and review several key topics in filtration processes: drag force, fluid velocity profile, intrinsic permeability and hydraulic tortuosity in microscale fluid dynamics, and particle straining, absorption, and accumulation in microscale particle dynamics. The paper also reviews several key experimental and computational techniques for investigating filtration processes at microscale considering their applicability and capability. Then, major findings in previous studies on these key topics are comprehensively reviewed in terms of microscale fluid and particle dynamics. Last, future research is discussed in terms of techniques, scopes and links. The review provides a comprehensive overview of microscale fluid and particle dynamics in filtration processes for water treatment and particle technology communities.

Discrimination between Pore and Throat Resistances against Single-Phase Flow in Porous Media

This study investigates the critical agents that cause non-Darrian flow in porous media. Four porous media different in morphology but similar in topology were studied numerically. By varying the throat diameters, the distinct roles of pores and throats in total dissipation were investigated using direct numerical simulation. Forchheimer model was selected to analyze the non-Darcian flow. In our simplified geometry, the ratio KappKD can best be correlated by non-Darcy effect (E). Total dissipation is directly related to the porous medium resistance against fluid flow. The energy dissipated in pores and throats was calculated by summing the dissipation in each computational segment. Pores are more prone to disobey the Darcy model than throats due to irregularity in fluid flow, and they are introduced as the cause of Darcy-model cessation. By increasing the pore-to-throat ratio, the non-Darcian flow in the pores begins sooner. The results show that the energy dissipation due to eddies is negligible. The dissipation in pores and throats was simulated through separate power-law equations, and their exponents were also extracted. The exponent for the pore body is equal to two when the viscous forces are dominant, and it increases by increasing the inertia force. The dissipation due to pore bodies is more apparent when the size of pore and throats are of the same order of magnitude. The relative losses of pore body increase as the velocity increases, in contrast to throats.

Critical pore radius and transport properties of disordered hard- and overlapping-sphere models

Transport properties of porous media are intimately linked to their pore-space microstructures. We quantify geometrical and topological descriptors of the pore space of certain disordered and ordered distributions of spheres, including pore-size functions and the critical pore radius δ_{c}. We focus on models of porous media derived from maximally random jammed sphere packings, overlapping spheres, equilibrium hard spheres, quantizer sphere packings, and crystalline sphere packings. For precise estimates of the percolation thresholds, we use a strict relation of the void percolation around sphere configurations to weighted bond percolation on the corresponding Voronoi networks. We use the Newman-Ziff algorithm to determine the percolation threshold using universal properties of the cluster size distribution. The critical pore radius δ_{c} is often used as the key characteristic length scale that determines the fluid permeability k. A recent study [Torquato, Adv. Wat. Resour. 140, 103565 (2020)10.1016/j.advwatres.2020.103565] suggested for porous media with a well-connected pore space an alternative estimate of k based on the second moment of the pore size 〈δ^{2}〉, which is easier to determine than δ_{c}. Here, we compare δ_{c} to the second moment of the pore size 〈δ^{2}〉, and indeed confirm that, for all porosities and all models considered, δ_{c}^{2} is to a good approximation proportional to 〈δ^{2}〉. However, unlike 〈δ^{2}〉, the permeability estimate based on δ_{c}^{2} does not predict the correct ranking of k for our models. Thus, we confirm 〈δ^{2}〉 to be a promising candidate for convenient and reliable estimates of the fluid permeability for porous media with a well-connected pore space. Moreover, we compare the fluid permeability of our models with varying degrees of order, as measured by the τ order metric. We find that (effectively) hyperuniform models tend to have lower values of k than their nonhyperuniform counterparts. Our findings could facilitate the design of porous media with desirable transport properties via targeted pore statistics.

Interpolation for the lattice-Boltzmann method to simulate colloid transport in porous media

The lattice-Boltzmann method is convenient for simulating flow fields in porous media. However, due to its lattice characteristics, the velocity near a solid surface is not accurate, which results in significant errors when simulating colloid transport in porous media. Based on the general properties of a flow field close to a solid surface, we propose an alternative velocity interpolation method in which the velocity at a solid surface is strictly zero. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed method can give more accurate results than the usual bilinear interpolation. In addition, we use this method to simulate the contact efficiency of colloids in porous media and obtain a new power-law form of the contact efficiency.

Microscale modeling of nondilute flow and transport in porous medium systems

Nondilute transport occurs routinely in porous medium systems. Experimental observations have revealed effects that seemingly depend upon density, viscosity, velocity, and chemical activity. Macroscale models based upon averaged behavior over many pores have been relied upon to describe such systems to date, which require parametrization of important physical phenomena in material coefficients. To advance fundamental understanding of these complex systems, we examine nondilute transport from a fundamental microscale, or pore-scale, continuum modeling perspective. We approximate the solution of a model based upon the variable-density Navier-Stokes equations and a nondilute species transport equation. Known dependencies of the densities, viscosities, chemical activity, and diffusion for a salt solution on chemical composition are included in the model. Microscale model solutions are averaged to the macroscale and compared with extant experimental observations. Investigation of the effects of various physical phenomena on the microscale velocity distribution and the observed macroscale dispersion are considered using dimensional analysis and constrained simulations. Simulation results are used to explain observed experimental results in light of underlying mechanisms. Conditions under which the various physicochemical effects investigated are important are revealed.