Pore-scale numerical study of flow and conduction heat transfer in fibrous porous media

Abstract

This work examined the feasibility of a simple approach for studying flow and conduction heat transfer in fibrous porous media, which cancels out the use of complicated and expensive X-ray equipment and its level of simplicity does not lead to large errors. A geometry reconstruction algorithm was proposed to model a fibrous porous medium that is used as catalyst support at pore scale. The structural characteristics as inputs for the algorithm were determined by scanning electron microscopy. The appropriate size of the simulation domain as a representative of the entire physical domain was selected using the Brinkman’s length criterion and the simulation results. The calculated permeability and thermal conductivity coefficients were validated by available experimental and analytical results in the literature. The effects of geometrical parameters such as solid volume fraction, fibers orientation and diameter on the permeability and effective thermal conductivity coefficients were also investigated in this work.