Influence of Stagnant Zones on Transient and Asymptotic Dispersion in Macroscopically Homogeneous Porous Media

D. Kandhai; D. Hlushkou; A. G. Hoekstra; P. M. A. Sloot; H. Van As; U. Tallarek

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.234501

Influence of Stagnant Zones on Transient and Asymptotic Dispersion in Macroscopically Homogeneous Porous Media

D. Kandhai, D. Hlushkou, A. G. Hoekstra, P. M. A. Sloot, H. Van As, and U. Tallarek

Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 234501 – Published 24 May 2002

Abstract

The role of stagnant zones in hydrodynamic dispersion is studied for creeping flow through a fixed bed of spherical permeable particles, covering several orders of characteristic time and length scales associated with fluid transport. Numerical simulations employ a hierarchical model to cope with the different temporal and spatial scales, showing good agreement with our experimental results on diffusion-limited mass transfer, transient, and asymptotic longitudinal dispersion. These data demonstrate that intraparticle liquid holdup in macroscopically homogeneous porous media clearly dominates over contributions caused by the intrinsic flow field heterogeneity and boundary-layer mass transfer.

Received 27 November 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.234501

Authors & Affiliations

D. Kandhai^1,2, D. Hlushkou^3,4, A. G. Hoekstra¹, P. M. A. Sloot¹, H. Van As⁵, and U. Tallarek^5,6,*

¹Section Computational Science, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam, Kruislaan 403 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
²Kramers Laboratorium voor Fysische Technologie, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, Prins Bernhardlaan 6, 2628 BW Delft, The Netherlands
³Max Planck Institute for the Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Sandtorstrasse 1, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany
⁴Department of System Analysis, Belarusian State University, 4, Francisk Scoryna Avenue, Minsk, 220050, Belarus
⁵Laboratory of Molecular Physics and Wageningen NMR Centre, Wageningen University, Dreijenlaan 3, 6703 HA Wageningen, The Netherlands
⁶Lehrstuhl für Chemische Verfahrenstechnik, Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Universitätsplatz 2, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany