Article
Energy & Fuels
T. R. Zakirov, M. G. Khramchenkov
Summary: This study investigates the impact of pore space heterogeneity on adsorption dynamics and finds that an increase in the disorder parameter leads to a decrease in adsorption rate, especially at low Peclet numbers. The results show that porosity has a significant influence on adsorption dynamics at high porosity, while the impact of heterogeneity is less pronounced.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
(2022)
Article
Thermodynamics
Sheng Chen, Wenhao Li, Hayder Mohammed
Summary: This study investigates the heat transfer characteristics of natural convection of large Prandtl number fluids in porous media using a novel lattice Boltzmann approach. It reveals significant differences between large and small Prandtl number fluids, with the former more easily transitioning from a convection-dominated process to a conduction-dominated one in porous media.
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS IN HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER
(2021)
Article
Engineering, Environmental
Xuan Kou, Xiao-Sen Li, Yi Wang, Rui Xu, Zhao-Yang Chen
Summary: This study achieved the controllable process of heterogeneous hydrate phase transition at a macroscale and successfully realized different distribution patterns of hydrates. The observations revealed that water and gas transfer in pores governed the kinetic of heterogeneous hydrate phase transition. A new sequence of nucleation-growth-migration driven by water migration for heterogeneous hydrate formation was proposed, and it was found that the phase transition rates between heterogeneous and homogeneous hydrate differed by 2 to 3 times due to mass migration. These findings are important for explaining the enrichment of methane hydrate in marine sediment and developing targeted approaches to natural gas hydrate production, as well as indicating the feasibility of hydrocarbon capture, storage, and transport using hydrate-based technologies.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Behzad Ghanbarian, Yashar Mehmani, Brian Berkowitz
Summary: This study investigates the influence of pore-wall roughness on contaminant migration through particle tracking simulations and analyzes the resulting arrival time distributions using the CTRW approach. The results show that pore-wall roughness has a significant impact on the parameters t(1) and D, while the Peclet number has a greater impact on v and D.
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Thermodynamics
Yousef Kazemian, Mohammad Javad Sayyari, Javad Abolfazli Esfahani
Summary: In this study, a two-dimensional analysis of natural convection inside a porous cavity at pore-scale is conducted using the lattice Boltzmann method, focusing on the impact of pores geometry. The findings show that the geometry of pores, such as star, circular, and square shapes, significantly influences the flow behavior, with star pores exhibiting the highest Nusselt number on the hot wall.
JOURNAL OF THERMAL ANALYSIS AND CALORIMETRY
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Jonas Bentz, Ravi A. Patel, Pascal Benard, Alice Lieu, Adrian Haupenthal, Eva Kroener
Summary: Wettability is an important parameter for determining hydrology in porous media, but the influence of spatially heterogeneous wettability distributions is not well understood. This study used numerical simulations to investigate the impact of spatially heterogeneous wettability patterns on infiltration in porous media. The results show that the specific location of wettability patterns within the pore space determines hydraulic dynamics and water repellency.
Article
Energy & Fuels
Rodrigo Michels, Diogo Nardelli Siebert, Luis Orlando Emerich dos Santos
Summary: This study investigates the impact of capillary number on wetting and nonwetting phase saturation in porous rocks, demonstrating that different capillary numbers lead to various patterns of fluid invasion and redistribution. Pore-scale events play a crucial role in trapping wetting fluid, with low capillary numbers showing higher nonwetting fluid saturation in 2D models and more trapped wetting fluid in 3D models. Heterogeneity in 3D models has a significant effect on sweeping effectiveness compared to porosity or intrinsic permeability.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
(2021)
Article
Mechanics
Chunwei Zhang, Kazuki Kaito, Yingxue Hu, Anindityo Patmonoaji, Shintaro Matsushita, Tetsuya Suekane
Summary: Solute transport in porous media is sensitive to heterogeneity at all scales, with pore-scale behavior affecting larger scales. Using a lattice Boltzmann method, simulations show that more heterogeneous media exhibit larger dispersion coefficients, with distinctive time regimes and power-law scaling observed for different types of rocks. The significance of mass transfer rate on mechanical dispersion is evaluated using the Damhohler number.
Article
Thermodynamics
B. Shruti, Md. Mahbub Alam, A. Parkash, S. Dhinakaran
Summary: In this study, the combined impact of Darcy and Rayleigh number changes on natural convection around two vertically arranged hot porous cylinders of different diameters in a square enclosure is numerically evaluated. The numerical simulations are conducted using the lattice Boltzmann technique and the D2Q9 model. It is found that heat transfer rates improve with an increase in cylinder size, Ra, and Da.
CASE STUDIES IN THERMAL ENGINEERING
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Multidisciplinary
Iman Moradi, Annunziata D'Orazio
Summary: This study investigates the flow characteristics and heat transfer in a pore-scale porous medium using the Single Relaxation Time SRT-LBM with BGK approximation and D2Q9 model. The results demonstrate that by changing the number and arrangement of obstacles, the velocity and temperature fields, as well as the local and average Nusselt number, can be modified.
ENGINEERING ANALYSIS WITH BOUNDARY ELEMENTS
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Andre F. V. Matias, Rodrigo C. V. Coelho, Jose S. Andrade Jr, Nuno A. M. Araujo
Summary: The flow through a porous medium is significantly affected by boundary conditions, which are often assumed to be static. Changes in the medium due to swelling and erosion have been considered in extending existing lattice-Boltzmann models. The competition between swelling and erosion determines the steady state, with a transition between regimes where either swelling or erosion dominates.
JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Geochemistry & Geophysics
Bohyun Hwang, Deepansh J. Srivastava, Hang Deng, Philip J. Grandinetti, David R. Cole
Summary: Sodium can be used as a tracer for brine in reservoir formations, and this study investigates the diffusion behavior of sodium in both bulk solution and porous media using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques. The results show that the diffusion rate of sodium decreases with increasing counter-ion size, with a greater effect observed at higher ionic strengths and in porous media. By combining numerical simulation and experimental methods, effective diffusion coefficients and matrix properties can be estimated.
GEOCHIMICA ET COSMOCHIMICA ACTA
(2022)
Article
Nanoscience & Nanotechnology
Muzamal Hussain, Humaira Sharif, Mohamed A. Khadimallah, Abir Mouldi, Hassen Loukil, Mohamed R. Ali, Abdelouahed Tounsi
Summary: This paper reports the characteristics of motile microorganism and three-dimensional Darcy-Forchheimer nanofluid flow by a porous rotatable disk with heat generation/absorption. The Buongiorno model is used to include the thermophoretic and Brownian motion aspects. Slip conditions are considered for velocity, thermal, concentration, and microorganism. A shooting procedure is implemented to evaluate the numerical results of physical quantities parametrically. Different physical parameters are considered, including heat sink/source parameter, thermal, Brownian number, thermophoresis parameter, concentration, Peclet number, bioconvected Lewis number, and microorganism on concentration and density of motile microorganism distributions. Graphs of concentration and microorganism are plotted to examine the influence of distinct prominent flow parameters.
ADVANCES IN NANO RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Mohammad Kazemi, Ali Takbiri-Borujeni, Sam Takbiri, Arefeh Kazemi
Summary: A physics-informed machine learning model is developed to replace numerical simulations of porous media. The model accurately predicts flow fields by learning the communications among grid cells. Generalization of permeability with high accuracy is challenging due to the random arrangements of particles, and building a comprehensive database for different grain/pore arrangements is expensive. The developed model uses deep learning to represent porous media and combines neural network architectures to avoid gradient issues, with the continuity and momentum conservation equations embedded in the loss function.
COMPUTERS & FLUIDS
(2023)
Article
Physics, Fluids & Plasmas
Dario Maggiolo, Francesco Picano, Federico Toschi
Summary: Through pore-scale numerical simulations, it has been shown that directional-dependent two-phase flow behavior can be achieved in anisotropic porous media with controlled design. The results demonstrate distinct invasion dynamics based on the direction of fluid injection relative to the medium orientation.
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Svetlana Kyas, Diego Volpatto, Martin O. Saar, Allan M. M. Leal
Summary: This work investigates the performance of the on-demand machine learning (ODML) algorithm in different reactive transport problems in heterogeneous porous media. The results show that even with strong heterogeneity, the ODML algorithm can significantly accelerate the calculations, thereby improving the efficiency of the entire reactive transport simulation.
COMPUTATIONAL GEOSCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Mohamed Ezzat, Benjamin M. Adams, Martin O. Saar, Daniel Vogler
Summary: Drilling costs can be a significant portion of geothermal project investment, and reducing these costs through techniques like Plasma Pulse Geo Drilling (PPGD) can greatly decrease overall project expenses. This paper presents a numerical model to study how pore characteristics affect the efficiency of PPGD, which is a contactless drilling technique that uses high-voltage pulses to fracture rock without mechanical abrasion.
Article
Energy & Fuels
Justin Ezekiel, Benjamin M. Adams, Martin O. Saar, Anozie Ebigbo
Summary: CO2-Plume Geothermal (CPG) power plants can produce heat and/or electric power, with the CO2 mass flowrate being a crucial parameter for system design. The flowrate not only determines power generation, but also has a significant impact on fluid pressure drawdown and two-phase flow regime in the production well.
Article
Engineering, Geological
Anil Kumar, Roger Hu, Stuart D. C. Walsh
Summary: Fully coupled hydro-mechanical simulations of fractured media require sophisticated non-linear solvers to capture the complex relationship between fluid flow and material's mechanical response. Modelling these systems can be onerous, so a reduction strategy is necessary to predict physical response with less computational effort and time.
ROCK MECHANICS AND ROCK ENGINEERING
(2022)
Review
Geochemistry & Geophysics
Shemin Ge, Martin O. Saar
Summary: This article provides a concise review of the triggering mechanisms of induced earthquakes, focusing on hydro-mechanical processes. Four mechanisms are reviewed: pore-fluid pressure diffusion, poroelastic stress, Coulomb static stress transfer, and aseismic slip. Several outstanding questions are discussed, and conclusions are drawn based on the review.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-SOLID EARTH
(2022)
Article
Water Resources
Hoda Javanmard, Martin O. Saar, Daniel Vogler
Summary: In this study, the heterogeneity of single rough rock fractures is parameterized using connectivity metrics for the first time. The results show that connectivity metrics can predict permeability with higher accuracy. All three studied connectivity metrics provide better permeability estimations when a larger aperture value is chosen as the cutoff threshold. Therefore, using connectivity metrics provides a less expensive alternative to estimate fracture permeability.
ADVANCES IN WATER RESOURCES
(2022)
Article
Mechanics
Mahsa Sakha, Morteza Nejati, Ali Aminzadeh, Saeid Ghouli, Martin O. Saar, Thomas Driesner
Summary: This study evaluates the accuracy of three fracture growth theories in predicting crack trajectories in anisotropic rocks through comparison with new experimental data. The results show that anisotropy can offset or reinforce the loading influence in determining the direction of crack growth, depending on the loading configurations. It is demonstrated that the modified forms of the maximum tangential stress (MTS) and maximum energy release rate (MERR) criteria give better predictions of fracture growth paths compared to the modified maximum strain energy density (MSED) criterion.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOLIDS AND STRUCTURES
(2022)
Article
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
Adam E. Malek, Benjamin M. Adams, Edoardo Rossi, Hans O. Schiegg, Martin O. Saar
Summary: Advanced Geothermal Systems (AGS) generate electric power through conductive heat transfer from rocks using a closed-loop circuit. However, AGS is currently uneconomical due to its slow heat transfer rate compared to heat advection. The use of CO2 as the working fluid improves AGS performance, and there are optimal parameters that minimize AGS costs. Nevertheless, significant advancements in drilling technologies are necessary to make AGS cost-competitive.
Article
Energy & Fuels
Jonathan D. Ogland-Hand, Stuart M. Cohen, Ryan M. Kammer, Kevin M. Ellett, Martin O. Saar, Jeffrey A. Bennett, Richard S. Middleton
Summary: Energy system planning tools are sensitive to the cost and feasibility of climate-stabilizing energy transitions, but often lack detailed representation of CO2 transportation and geologic storage. This study develops a dynamic reservoir simulation-based geologic CO2 storage supply curve and investigates the effects of CO2 transportation and storage representation on energy system planning tool results. The findings highlight the importance of considering variable costs for geologic CO2 storage and the impact of CO2 transportation on storage investment location.
FRONTIERS IN ENERGY RESEARCH
(2022)
Article
Engineering, Civil
Isamu Naets, Mehrdad Ahkami, Po-Wei Huang, Martin O. Saar, Xiang-Zhao Kong
Summary: This study investigates the impact of shear displacement on flow path evolution within fractures through experimental observations and quantitative analyses. The results show that with increasing shear displacement, aperture variability and correlation length of fractures increase, leading to changes in fluid velocity variability, streamline tortuosity, and streamline spacing variability.
JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY
(2022)
Correction
Engineering, Chemical
Po-Wei Huang, Bernd Flemisch, Chao-Zhong Qin, Martin O. Saar, Anozie Ebigbo
TRANSPORT IN POROUS MEDIA
(2022)
Article
Engineering, Chemical
Po-Wei Huang, Bernd Flemisch, Chao-Zhong Qin, Martin O. Saar, Anozie Ebigbo
Summary: Spatial scaling effects lead to discrepancies in mineral dissolution rates measured at different scales. In this study, we investigate the impact of pore-scale spatial heterogeneity in porous media on overall mineral dissolution rates, and propose a constitutive relation based on Darcy-scale reaction order to model reactive transport at the Darcy scale. Our results suggest that mineral spatial heterogeneity can be inferred from solute concentration measurements in flow-through dissolution experiments.
TRANSPORT IN POROUS MEDIA
(2022)
Article
Engineering, Chemical
Xiang-Zhao Kong, Mehrdad Ahkami, Isamu Naets, Martin O. Saar
Summary: This study quantifies the transport of solutes in a 3D-printed fractured porous medium with high-permeability inclusions. The results show that compared to a high-permeability matrix, a low-permeability matrix has a higher solute concentration peak, a higher solute velocity peak, a smaller dispersion coefficient peak, a lower mixing rate, and a smaller solute-occupied pore volume.
TRANSPORT IN POROUS MEDIA
(2023)
Article
Geochemistry & Geophysics
M. L. T. Dambly, F. Samrock, A. V. Grayver, M. O. Saar
Summary: The Main Ethiopian Rift is characterized by extensive volcanism and the formation of geothermal systems, directly impacting the lives of millions of people. Through the use of magnetotelluric method, a multi-scale 3D electrical conductivity model of a segment of the central Main Ethiopian Rift was obtained, revealing a magma ponding zone and its connection to Aluto volcano via a fault-aligned transcrustal magma system. This model provides important constraints for future geothermal developments and volcanic hazard assessments in the region.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-SOLID EARTH
(2023)
Article
Geochemistry & Geophysics
Xiaodong Ma, Marian Hertrich, Florian Amann, Kai Broeker, Nima Gholizadeh Doonechaly, Valentin Gischig, Rebecca Hochreutener, Philipp Kaestli, Hannes Krietsch, Michele Marti, Barbara Naegeli, Morteza Nejati, Anne Obermann, Katrin Plenkers, Antonio P. Rinaldi, Alexis Shakas, Linus Villiger, Quinn Wenning, Alba Zappone, Falko Bethmann, Raymi Castilla, Francisco Seberto, Peter Meier, Thomas Driesner, Simon Loew, Hansruedi Maurer, Martin O. Saar, Stefan Wiemer, Domenico Giardini
Summary: The increased interest in subsurface development and associated seismicity requires a better understanding of hydro-seismo-mechanical coupling in fractured rock masses. In order to bridge the knowledge gap between laboratory and reservoir scales, controllable in situ experiments are necessary. The BedrettoLab provides a testing ground for studying the hydro-seismo-mechanical response of fractured crystalline rock masses.