Transport Phenomena in Complex Multi-phase Media: a Tomography-based Approach Applied to Solar Fuel Production and Snow Science

Transport phenomena in complex multi-phase media are of interest in a wide range of areas in science and industry such as: chemical processing, combustion, atmospheric research, and nuclear, solar, civil, environmental, and medical engineering. The analysis of complex interactions between different transport processes on multiple scales is fundamental to understanding and optimizing systems containing multi-phase media. Volume averaging models for multi-phase media, commonly applied for process simulation, rely to a great extent on the accurate knowledge of the multi-phase media's effective transport properties. These properties, in turn, depend on morphological and single phase properties. A combined experimental-numerical procedure is presented in this book. Exact 3D geometries of complex multi-phase media are experimentally determined by computed tomography and used in direct discrete-scale numerical simulations for morphological characterization and determination of effective transport properties. Heat and mass transport phenomena of various complex and anisotropic media are discussed in detail. Applications in solar fuel technology and snow science are presented.