The Impact of Pore-Scale Heterogeneity on Drying Porous Media

Abstract:

We study isothermal drying of heterogeneous porous media. An idealized model made of an array of solid cylinders filled with a wetting liquid is exposed to dry air. Evaporation at the liquid-air interface drives the invasion of air into the medium. We seek understanding of how the macroscopic drying behavior—drying rates and patterns—emerge from the pore-scale physics through micromodel experiments and pore-network simulations. Physics of drying in our 2D model is represented as interactions between simple objects: grains, pores, and throats. Preliminary results from the experiments and simulations suggest that the roughness of the air-liquid interface increases with pore-scale heterogeneity, and that liquid transport through thick films plays a significant role.