Pore Network Analysis of Zone Model for Porous Media Drying

In view of the fact that the zone model for porous media drying cannot disclose the mechanism of liquid phase distribution effectively, a pore network model for the slow isothermal drying process of porous media was developed by applying the theories of pore network drying and transport-process, which fused the physical parameters of porous media, such as porosity, pore mean diameter, and pore size distribution into the model parameters, and a sand bed drying experiment was conducted to verify the validity of this model. The experiment and simulation results indicate that the pore network model could explain the slow isothermal drying process of porous media well. The pore size distributions of porous media have a great effect on the liquid phase distribution of the drying process. The dual-zone model is suitable for the porous media whose pore size distribution obeys Gaussian distribution, while the three-zone model is suitable for the porous media whose pore size distribution obeys the lognormal distribution when the drying analysis of porous media is conducted.