Thermodynamic Modeling of Pure Components Including the Effects of Capillarity Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2016 American Chemical Society. Capillarity is seen in many physical processes where fluids are confined in a porous medium. Fluid properties and flow are both theoretically and experimentally shown to change because of capillary effects. Owing to difficulty and expense in experimentally determining these properties in porous media with small pores, a mechanistic approach is taken to incorporate capillary effects in thermodynamic modeling. The Young-Laplace equation provides an ideal method, making the system a function of pore size and wettability, thus taking into account the porous material properties and fluid-tomaterial interactions. The method proposed here shows good agreement with both experimental data and molecular simulation. The advantage is its ease of application in thermodynamic modeling and relatively small computation requirement compared to molecular simulation. Because of capillarity, the phase envelope of pure substances is suppressed, indicating a change in phase density and liquid fraction. This method is a powerful tool in describing fluid behavior in porous media.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING DATA

author list (cited authors)

  • Stimpson, B. C., & Barrufet, M. A.

citation count

  • 15

complete list of authors

  • Stimpson, Brian C||Barrufet, Maria A

publication date

  • August 2016