Simulation of Flow and Transport at the Micro (Pore) Scale
An important problem in porous media involves the ability of micron and submicron-sized biological particles such as viruses or bacteria to move in groundwater systems through geologic media characterized by rock or mixed gravel, clay and sand materials. Current simulation capabilities require properly upscaled (continuum) models of colloidal filtration and adsorption to augment existing theories of fluid flow and chemical transport. Practical models typically address flow and transport behavior in aquifers over distances of 1 to 10 km where, for example, fluid momentum balance is governed by the simple Darcy's Law as a function of a pressure gradient, elevation gradient and a medium-dependent permeability parameter. In addition to fluid advection, there are multiple transport processes occurring in these systems including diffusion, dispersion and chemical interactions with solids or other aqueous chemical species. Particle transport is typically modeled in the same way as dissolved species, except that additional loss terms are incorporated to model particle filtration (physical interception), adsorption (chemical interception) and inactivation. Proper resolution of these processes at the porous medium continuum scale constitutes an important closure problem in subsurface science. We present a new simulation capability based on enabling technologies developed for microfluidics applications to model transport of colloidal-sized particles at the microscale, with relevance to the pore scale in geophysical subsurface systems. Particulate is represented by a bead-rod polymer model and is fully-coupled to a Newtonian solvent described by Navier-Stokes. Finite differences are used to discretize the interior of the domain; a Cartesian grid embedded boundary/volume-of-fluid method is used near boundaries and interfaces. This approach to complex geometry is amenable to direct simulation on grids obtained from surface extractions of tomographic image data. Short-range interactions are included in the particle model. This capability has been previously demonstrated on polymer flow in spatially-resolved packed bed (3D) and post array (2D) systems. We also discuss the advantages of this approach for the development of high-resolution adaptive algorithms for multiscale continuum-particle and mesoscale coarse-grained molecular dynamics models.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 920479
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-PROC-229773; TRN: US0805478
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Presented at: 2nd International Conference on Porous Media and its Applications in Science and Engineering, Kauai, HI, United States, Jun 17 - Jun 21, 2007
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS//MATHEMATICS, COMPUTING, AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
ADSORPTION
AQUIFERS
BACTERIA
DIFFUSION
FILTRATION
FLUID FLOW
GEOMETRY
INACTIVATION
INTERACTION RANGE
PACKED BEDS
PARTICLE MODELS
PARTICULATES
PERMEABILITY
POLYMERS
PRESSURE GRADIENTS
RESOLUTION
SOLVENTS
VIRUSES