Numerical Study of Dispersive Mass Transport in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Porous Media

A modular simulation approach is used to compute the flow of a fluid and the mass transport of tracers in the void space of computer-generated porous packings. Effective transport properties such as the diffusive tortuosity and the dispersion tensor are determined. First, we present and compare two different approaches to model mass transport in homogeneous porous media. Subsequently, heterogeneous porous media are considered, where we investigate the effect of walls on the structure of confined random sphere packings and how it affects the mass transport properties of a sphere packing. In addition, the hydraulic tortuosity is computed and its performance as a descriptor of porous media is compared with that of the diffusive tortuosity.