Defining the pressures of a fluid in a nanoporous, heterogeneous medium

TL;DR

This paper applies nanothermodynamics to define and analyze the pressures within a confined fluid in a nanoporous medium, using molecular simulations to confirm theoretical relations and compute key thermodynamic properties.

Contribution

It introduces a nanothermodynamic framework with separate control variables for confined fluids, clarifying pressure definitions and providing simulation-based validation.

Findings

Identification of two distinct pressures: integral and differential.

Confirmation of nanothermodynamic relations through molecular simulations.

Quantitative calculations of density, surface tension, and energy in nanoporous systems.

Abstract

We describe the thermodynamic state of a single-phase fluid confined to a porous medium with Hill's thermodynamics of small systems, also known as nanothermodynamics. This way of defining small system thermodynamics, with a separate set of control variables, may be useful for the study of transport in non-deformable porous media, where presently no consensus exists on pressure computations. For a confined fluid, we observe that there are two pressures, the integral and the differential pressures. We use molecular simulations to investigate and confirm the nanothermodynamic relations for a representative elementary volume (REV). For a model system of a single-phase fluid in a face-centered cubic lattice of solid spheres of varying porosity, we calculate the fluid density, fluid-solid surface tension, replica energy, integral pressure, entropy, and internal energy.