Introduction to Modelling of Transport Phenomena in Porus Media : Theory and Applications of Transport in Porus Media

The main purpose of this book is to provide the theoretical background to engineers and scientists engaged in modeling transport phenomena in porous media, in connection with various engineering projects, and to serve as a text for senior and graduate courses on transport phenomena in porous media. Such courses are taught in various disciplines, e. g. , civil engineering, chemical engineering, reservoir engineering, agricultural engineering and soil science. In these disciplines, problems are encountered in which various extensive quantities, e. g. , mass and heat, are transported through a porous material domain. Often the porous material contains several fluid phases, and the various extensive quantities are transported simultaneously throughout the multiphase system. In all these disciplines, management decisions related to a system's development and its operation have to be made. To do so, the 'manager', or the planner, needs a tool that will enable him to forecast the response of the system to the implementation of proposed management schemes. This forecast takes the form of spatial and temporal distributions of variables that describe the future state of the considered system. Pressure, stress, strain, density, velocity, solute concentration, temperature, etc. , for each phase in the system, and sometime for a component of a phase, may serve as examples of state variables. The tool that enables the required predictions is the model. A model may be defined as a simplified version of the real (porous medium) system that approximately simulates the excitation-response relations of the latter.

This book presents and discusses the construction of mathematical models that describe phenomena of flow and transport in porous media as encountered in civil and environmental engineering, petroleum and agricultural engineering, as well as chemical and geothermal engineering. The phenomena of transport of extensive quantities, like mass of fluid phases, mass of chemical species dissolved in fluid phases, momentum and energy of the solid matrix and of fluid phases occupying the void space of porous medium domains are encountered in all these disciplines. The book, which can also serve as a text for courses on modeling in these disciplines, starts from first principles and focuses on the construction of well-posed mathematical models that describe all these transport phenomena.