THERMAL SCIENCE
International Scientific Journal
A COMBINED EXPERIMENTAL/NUMERICAL APPROACH TO STUDY THE THERMAL DISPERSION IN POROUS MEDIA FLOWS
ABSTRACT
The non-isothermal transport during flow in porous media is studied for single- and dualscale porous media. A new combined experimental/numerical approach to estimating the thermal dispersion tensor is introduced and applied for both isotropic (single-scale) and anisotropic (dualscale) porous media. The equivalence between the heat and mass transfer is exploited and a 1-D flow experimental setup is employed to study the spreading of a dye. Later, the mathematical model for such a spreading of concentration (equivalent to the temperature) around a point input in a constant velocity field is solved using the finite element based code COMSOL. Thus obtained numerical spreading pattern is fitted onto the experimentally observed one using the dispersion matrix (tensor) as a fitting parameter. A few cases of single- and dual-scale porous media are studied and the dispersion tensors are reported for each individual case. In one case, the results are validated with the available experimental data in the literature which shows a good match.
KEYWORDS
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2011-06-26
PAPER REVISED: 2012-01-14
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2012-01-14
THERMAL SCIENCE YEAR
2014, VOLUME
18, ISSUE
Supplement 2, PAGES [S463 - S474]
- Rudd, C.D., Long, A.C., Kendall, K.N., Mangin, C.G.E., Liquid Molding Technologies, Woodhead Publishing Ltd., UK, 1997
- Pillai, K.M., Munagavalasa, M.S., Governing Equations for Unsaturated Flow through Woven Fiber Mats. Part 2. Non-Isothermal Reactive Flows, Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 35 (2004), 4, pp.403-415
- Phelan, F.R., Modeling of Microscale Flow in Fibrous Porous Media, Springer-Verlag New York Inc., USA, 1991
- Nield, D.A., Bejan, A., Convection in Porous Media, Springer, USA, 2006
- Robert A. Greenkorn, Flow Phenomena in Porous Media, New York and Besel, USA, 1983
- Rubin, H., Heat dispersion effect on thermal convection in a porous medium layer, Journal of Hydrology,21 (1974), pp. 173-184
- Nikolaevskii, V.N., Convective diffusion in porous media, Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, 23 (1959), 6, pp. 1492-1503
- Bear, J., On the Tensor Form of Dispersion in Porous Media, Journal of Geophysical Research, 66 (1961), pp. 1185-1197
- Scheidegger, A.E., General Theory of Dispersion in Porous Media, Journal of Geophysical Research, 66 (1961), 10, pp. 3273-3278
- Poreh, M., The Dispersivity Tensor in Isotropic and Axisymmetric Mediums, Journal of Geophysical Research, 70 (1965), pp. 3909-3913
- Whitaker, S., Diffusion and Dispersion in Porous Media, AIChE Journal, 13 (1967), 3, pp. 420-427
- Patel, R.D. and R.A. Greenkorn, On Dispersion in Laminar Flow through Porous Media, AIChE Journal, 16 (1970), 2, pp. 332-334
- Mohseni Languri, E., Isothermal and Non-isothermal Flows in Porous Media, Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA, 2011
- Bouchaus J.P., Anomalous Diffusion in Disordered Media: Statistical Mechanisms, Models and Physical Applications, Physics Reports, 195 (1990), pp. 127-293