title: Influence of stagnant zones on transient and asymptotic dispersion in macroscopically homogeneous porous media.
abstract: The role of stagnant zones in hydrodynamic dispersion is studied for creeping flow through a fixed bed of spherical permeable particles, covering several orders of characteristic time and length scales associated with fluid transport. Numerical simulations employ a hierarchical model to cope with the different temporal and spatial scales, showing good agreement with our experimental results on diffusion-limited mass transfer, transient, and asymptotic longitudinal dispersion. These data demonstrate that intraparticle liquid holdup in macroscopically homogeneous porous media clearly dominates over contributions caused by the intrinsic flow field heterogeneity and boundary-layer mass transfer.
authors.affiliation: Section Computational Science, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam, Kruislaan 403 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kandhai
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hlushkou
authors.forename: A G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Hoekstra
authors.forename: P M A
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Sloot
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Van As
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Tallarek