Colloidal Transport in Locally Periodic Evolving Porous Media -- An Upscaling Exercise

TL;DR

This paper develops an upscaled model for colloidal particle transport in porous media, accounting for local clogging and sphere growth, enabling simulation of clogging regions and storage capacity estimation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel upscaling approach that incorporates local pore clogging and solid sphere growth into macroscopic models of colloidal transport.

Findings

Models can detect clogging regions.

Simulations estimate storage capacity of porous media.

Effective transport tensors incorporate local growth effects.

Abstract

We derive an upscaled model describing the aggregation and deposition of colloidal particles within a porous medium allowing for the possibility of local clogging of the pores. At the level of the pore scale, we extend an existing model for colloidal dynamics including the evolution of free interfaces separating colloidal particles deposited on solid boundaries (solid spheres) from the colloidal particles transported through the gaseous parts of the porous medium. As a result of deposition, the solid spheres grow reducing therefore the space available for transport in the gaseous phase. Upscaling procedures are applied and several classes of macroscopic models together with effective transport tensors are obtained, incorporating explicitly the local growth of the solid spheres. The resulting models are solved numerically and various simulations are presented. In particular, they are able to detect clogging regions, and therefore, can provide estimates on the storage capacity of the porous matrix.