Hemispheres-in-Cell Geometry to Predict Colloidal Deposition in Porous Media

A “Hemispheres-in-cell” geometry is presented to predict colloidal transport and retention is porous media. This new geometry preserves the utilities provided in the Happel sphere-in-cell geometry, but also incorporates features (e.g. grain to grain contacts) that are shown to drive colloid deposition from experiments and simulations when colloid-surface repulsion exists. Here we describe development of the fluid flow field and particle trajectory simulations for the Hemispheres-in-cell geometry, and present simulated results in the absence of repulsive energy barriers across a broad range of parameters (e.g. particle size, flow rate, porosity). Numerical results are compared to existing models and experiments. A correlation equation for predicting collector efficiencies in the Hemispheres-in-cell model in the absence of energy barriers was developed via regression of numerical results to dimensionless parameters. In addition, preliminary results on predicting colloid deposition in granular media in the presence of energy barriers using this geometry will be presented.