Maziar Veyskarami

Abstract

Evaporation of droplets formed at the interface of a coupled free-flow–porous medium system enormously affects the exchange of mass, momentum, and energy between the two domains. In this work, we develop a model to describe multiple droplets’ evaporation at the interface, in which new sets of coupling conditions including the evaporating droplets are developed to describe the interactions between the free flow and the porous medium. Employing pore-network modeling to describe the porous medium, we take the exchanges occurring on the droplet–pore and droplet–free-flow interfaces into account. In this model, we describe the droplet evaporation as a diffusion-driven process, where vapor from the droplet surface diffuses into the surrounding free flow due to the concentration gradient. To validate the model, we compare the simulation results for the evaporation of a single droplet in a channel with experimental data, demonstrating that our model accurately describes the evaporation process. Then, we examine the impact of free-flow and porous medium properties on droplet evaporation. The results show that, among other factors, velocity and relative humidity in the free-flow domain, as well as pore temperature in the porous medium, play key roles in the droplet evaporation process.

Abstract

In this paper, we address the expensive computational cost resulting from limited time-step sizes during numerical simulations of two-phase flow in porous media using dynamic pore-network models. To overcome this issue, we propose a numerical method for dynamic pore-network models using a fully implicit approach. The proposed method introduces a regularization strategy considering the historical fluid configuration at the pore throat, which smooths the discontinuities in local conductivity caused by invasion and snap-off events. The results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in terms of accuracy, efficiency and consistency in comparison with other numerical schemes. With similar computational cost, determined by time-step sizes and number of Newton iterations, the developed method in this work yields more accurate results compared to similar schemes presented in the literature. Additionally, our results highlight the enhanced robustness of the our scheme, as it exhibits reduced sensitivity to variations in time-step sizes.

Abstract

Droplets formed on the hydrophobic surface of a porous medium exposed to a cross-flowing gas stream have a strong influence on the mass, momentum, and energy exchange across the porous interface, being of importance in several physical systems and engineering applications, like fuel cells. However, the fluid displacement front is highly complex at the pore-scale, since it is characterized by the surface wettability and a contact angle variation along the triple line. Furthermore, the droplet formation is affected by the pore geometry and the surface wettability. These result in a challenging multi-phase scenario with controversial literature, and few studies consider the detailed mechanism of droplet formation on the surface of the porous medium. In this work, two multi-scale simulations for the emerging water droplet from a single hydrophobic capillary pore opening into the gas phase are validated by a benchmark experiment with the help of a high-resolution X-ray imaging technique to characterize the droplet growing. A three-domain approach (gaseous free flow, interface and porous medium, FIP) was compared with a two-domain approach (based on a free-flow and the porous medium, FP). Whereas the three-domain approach introduces two sets of coupling conditions, one for the free flow-interface and one for the interface-porous medium, the two-domain approach introduces only one set of coupling connections for describing the interaction between the domains. In both approaches, droplet formation and growth alter the coupling conditions between the domains. While the FIP approach treats the porous medium as a continuous matter, it is resolved discretely with the help of a pore network in the FP approach. Both approaches show good agreements with the experimental observations and high correspondences for the drop volume, radii and contact angle evolution. The proposed models provide a base for future developments and help to gain a better insight about the impact of the droplet formation on the interface in a coupled free flow-porous medium system.

Abstract

For improved operating conditions of a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell, a sophisticated water management is crucial. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the transport mechanisms of water throughout the cell constituents especially on the cathode side, where the excess water has to be removed. Pore-scale modeling of diffusion layers and gas distributor has been established as a favorable technique to investigate the ongoing processes. Investigating the interface between the cathode layers, a particular challenge is the combination and interaction of the multi-phase flow in the porous material of the gas diffusion layer (GDL) with the free flow in the gas distributor channels. The formation, growth and detachment of water droplets on the hydrophobic, porous surface of the GDL have a major influence on the mass, momentum and energy exchange between the layers. A dynamic pore-network model is used to describe the flow through the porous GDL on the pore-scale. To capture the droplet occurrence and its influence on the flow, this dynamic two-phase pore-network model is extended to capture droplet formation and growth at the surface of the GDL as well as droplet detachment due to the gas flow in the gas distributor channels. In this article, the developed model is applied to single- and multi-tube systems to investigate the general drop behavior. These rather simple test-cases are compared to experimental and numerical data available in the literature. Finally, the model is applied to a GDL unit cell to analyze the interaction between two-phase flow through the GDL and drop formation at the interface between GDL and gas distributor channel.