Drying of Porous Media

Abstract

Drying of porous media is part of our daily experience, yet this common process is central to many environmental and engineering applications ranging from soil evaporation affecting hydrological water balance and climatic processes, to the drying of food and building materials, and driving plant life through transpiration. Drying rates from porous media may exhibit complex dynamics reflecting internal transport mechanisms and motion of phase change fronts that determine rates of drying and critically affect surface energy partitioning. These interactions and resulting drying dynamics present a challenge to the prediction of drying rates and interplay among mass and energy exchange even for fixed boundary conditions. This special issue is an outcome of a symposium that was organized in the 6th International Conference of the Interpore Society held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, in 2014, that brought together researchers from various disciplines interested in drying of porous media. The contributions included in this special issue span a wide range of topics and mechanistic aspects of porous media drying and reinforcing the importance and similarity of mechanisms and parameters influencing drying processes at different settings, considering different spatial scales and representing a blend of experimental, mechanistic theoretical and numerical approaches. Although it should be clear that all aspects of drying could not be addressed, the contributions in this special issue will give the reader a wide overview of the field and will introduce several important open problems that are the subject of active research. These include the impact of second capillary effects (liquid films, liquid bridges) on drying, the coupling between internal and external transfers, the interplay between evaporation, ion transport B Nima Shokri

Evaporation Study for Real Soils Based on HYPROP Hydraulic Functions and Micro‐CT‐Measured Pore‐Size Distribution

“…The evaporation process is depicted in Fig. 1 and has been analyzed in numerous experimental and theoretical studies at the pore scale and representative elementary volume (REV) scale (Shaw, 1987; Eijkel et al, 2005; Metzger and Tsotsas, 2005; Lehmann et al, 2008; Tokunaga, 2009; Ahrenholz et al, 2011; Zeng et al, 2011; Shahraeeni et al, 2012; Aminzadeh and Or, 2013; Davarzani et al, 2014; Mosthaf et al, 2014; Krafczyk et al, 2015; Haghighi et al, 2013; Peters et al, 2015; Shokri et al, 2015; Trautz et al, 2015; Yiotis et al, 2015).…”

Heat and Mass Transfer in Porous Materials

“…Heat and mass transfer processes in PM are part of our daily experience, and this general process is central to many environmental and engineering applications, from the evaporation of moisture from the soil to the drying of various products and building materials. The intensity of heat and mass transfer in porous media can exhibit complex dynamics, reflecting internal transport mechanisms and the motion of the phase transition front, which critically affect the distribution of surface energy [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ].…”

Porosity and Pore Size Distribution of Native and Delignified Beech Wood Determined by Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry

“…However, the investigation of delignified wood samples is lacking, especially when considering the drying process. Indeed, drying is an important step when considering porous materials [40], as it greatly influences their structure and material properties. Since wood is a hygroscopic material, bound water is always present within the cell walls when stored under ambient conditions.…”