Impact of spatially correlated pore-scale heterogeneity on drying porous media

Abstract

We study the effect of spatially-correlated heterogeneity on isothermal drying of porous media. We combine a minimal pore-scale model with microfluidic experiments with the same pore geometry. Our simulated drying behavior compare favorably with experiments, considering the large sensitivity of the emergent behavior to the uncertainty associated with even small manufacturing errors. We show that increasing the correlation length in particle sizes promotes preferential drying of clusters of large pores, prolonging liquid connectivity and surface wetness and thus higher drying rates for longer periods. Our findings improve our quantitative understanding of how pore-scale heterogeneity impacts drying, which plays a role in a wide range of processes ranging from fuel cells to curing of paints and cements to global budgets of energy, water and solutes in soils.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Fingering patterns in hierarchical porous media
• Validating pore-scale models of drying using microfluidic experiments
• Immiscible fluid displacement in porous media with spatially correlated particle sizes
• Drying and percolation in spatially correlated porous media
• Efficient Simulation of Fluid Flow and Transport in Heterogeneous Media Using Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)