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Abstract |
The specific research group offers key solutions for the simulation,
design, and optimisation of many research and industrial
applications in porous solids. It can provide an extended set of
specialized user-friendly software tools for study and simulation of
real porous materials and estimation of flow and transport
properties of fluids within. Each tool has a specific area of
application, relative to geology, reservoir and oil engineering,
environmental engineering, catalysis, membranes and ceramics
manufacturing, and associated R&TD and industrial subjects. |
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Description |
The solutions offered can be of great importance to the simulation,
design, and optimisation of many research and industrial
applications in porous solids. These include:
- Specialised modelling and simulation software for the
characterization of natural and synthetic materials, as well as the
estimation of their fluid transport properties.
- These tools offer effective computer structural representation
of porous materials of modern commercial and technological interest,
using microstructure information from characterization experiments.
- This representation is used for estimation of valuable
transport properties, as the absolute and relative permeability, the
effective dispersivity, the retardation or filtration capacity and
forecast of energy losses, for modern industrial and environmental
activities of fluid flow, as water, oil, air, exhaust and natural
gas, in these media.
- The results of these calculations are also available as a
reliable supply to macroscopic simulators.
- Support services via (i) the development of completed studies and
the attendance of company in vital inquiring programs as
subcontractor, and via (ii) educational and training seminars of
software that will be on the market.
The software tools offered in the FORTH/4S package can be classified
into two types:
I. tools for 3D reconstruction and representation of porous media,
entitled in general "PoreSpace", and
II. tools for flow and transport estimation in structured and
unstructured porous media, designated as "PoreNetFlow".
The software tools that are available in the package are the
following:
- Class PoreSpace
- PoreSpace/Genus: Estimation of 3D geometric and topologic
characteristics of porous materials; open and closed porosity, pore
and contact sizes, connectivity between pores, tortuosity and genus,
chamber and throat size correlations.
- PoreSpace/Explorer: 3D representation of reconstructed porous
structures.
- PoreSpace/Reconstruct: Calculation and reconstruction of thin or
compact 3D porous structures via statistical methods.
- PoreSpace/Flow: Simulation of two-phase flow in porous materials
of any geometry.
- Class PoreNetFlow
- PoreNetFlow/Deposit: Simulation of deposition of particles and
reduction of permeability during flow of aqueous suspensions.
- PoreNetFlow/Clog: Simulation of dynamic behavior of suspensions of
pollutants in advanced stages of deposition.
- PoreNetFlow/Immiscible Displacement & DeProF: Simulation of flow
and miscible and immiscible displacement in enhanced oil recovery
processes.
- PoreNetFlow/Dispersion: Program of simulation of dispersion of
pollutant substances in underground reservoirs and subsoil
formations.
- PoreNetFlow/Gas: Gas diffusion and sorption control of porous
semiconducting detectors.
Precise and extensive structure determination of permeable porous
media is often required in relative modern research and
technological activities, in combination with theoretical analysis
of transport and sorption phenomena within such materials.
Phenomena of heat and mass transport in porous media often take
place in industrial, biological, agricultural and geological
activities. Formal application examples are:
- primary and secondary oil extrusion,
- activities of deep bed filtering, wetting, drying,
- segregation of solutions or suspensions via porous membranes,
- diffusion and heat transport in catalytic pellets,
- chromatograpic segregation of aqueous solutions,
- hydrodynamic chromatography,
- water mobilization in subsoil,
- environmental risk assessment of pollution in underground
formations,
- flow of natural gas in rocks, and
- detection of gases with ceramic sensors via diffusion in the
vicinity of the pores and surface sorption on the pore walls.
Customers interested in the application and exploitation of proposed
company software originate through the following fields:
- Oil enterprises with research departments where the software will
be used for study of morphology of underground rocks and flow of oil
and water in underground formations.
- Manufacturing enterprises of porous filters, membranes, beds of
segregation and catalysts, for optimisation and promotion of
products of segregation and third level water treatment.
- Geological Institutes, for underground reservoirs and groundwater
studies.
- Enterprises of environmental studies and environmental risk
assessment, on the study of dispersion of hazardous substances in
the subsoil.
- Natural gas enterprises for morphology studies of underground
rocks, and flow or storing of natural gas in underground formations.
- Manufacturing companies of porous ceramic sensors for gas
detection at the disposal of natural gas and kindred substances for
industrial or domestic uses.
- Universities and Research Institutes that will use the software
for education, research and technological development.
Complete solutions of relevant applications, from the experimental
study of properties (porosity, mercury intrusion/extrusion, BET,
serial tomography, S. E. M.) up to structure modelling and
calculation of transport and sorption properties at the flow fluid
in their interior can be also entirely obtained. |