Dual-porosity approach: heat transfer and heat storage processes in porous media

ABSTRACT

This study emphasizes the significance of understanding groundwater flow behavior for effective contaminant transport and heat storage. Aquifers, with their irregular shapes and variable permeability, exhibit anisotropic flow resistances that affect mass and heat transfer, posing challenges for modeling. The dual-porosity model is used as a numerical approach to calculate macroscopic heat transfer without explicitly resolving the structure. By solving equations for mobile and immobile phases and coupling relevant equations for heat conservation, this model was applied to transient numerical experiments simulating heat transfer and storage in a desktop model filled with glass beads. Results indicate alignment with experimental and numerical models resolving porous structures on the microstructure scale. This methodology offers a comprehensive digital toolbox for solving large-scale heat storage problems in aquifers, contributing to digital and sustainability transformations with reasonable computational demands.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual-porosity
• computational fluid dynamics
• adsorption

Acknowledgments

We thank Federal Ministry of Education and research (BMBF) for funding the project “PoroSan” (FKZ 01IS18013A-C), in which most of these results have emerged. We also thank the Helmholtz Association for supporting the research on porous structure characterization and data interpretations. We acknowledge support by the KIT-Publication Fund of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The main research has been funded through the BMBF project “PoroSan” [FKZ 01IS18013A-C]. Contributions regarding the porous structure characterization and data interpretations are provided by the support of the Helmholtz Association, programs MSE and KNHFi, no.43.31.01.