A2-D PORE NETWORK MODEL OF THE ISOTHERMAL DRYINGWITH VISCOUS FLOW

Drying is an immiscible displacement process which has a great importance in chemical industries. Two dimentionalmonomodal and bimodal pore network modelsare considered to study isothermal drying behavior of a capillary porous media saturated with water. This model accounts for various mass transfer mechanisms at the pore scale such as capillary pumping and viscous flow in liquid phase and diffusion in gas phase. To study the effect of viscous flow on drying process, the simulations results are compared with non-viscous results of the same network. The results indicate stabilized invasion patterns of drying front and a low drying rate in the presence of viscous forces. Simulation results are presented as drying rate curves, phase distributions, evolution of number of liquid clusters and saturation profiles for monomodal and bimodal pore network structures.Drying rate is higher in the bimodal pore network model due to suitable arrangement of macro and micro throats in this structure.

Keywords:

Capillary porous media , Capillary pumping , Viscous flow , Phase distributions , Drying rate curves