Experimental Assessment of Porous Material Anisotropy and its Effect on Gas Permeability

The results of experimental research upon the assessment of porous material anisotropy and its effect on gas permeability of porous materials with respect to the gas flow. The conducted research applied to natural materials with an anisotropic gap-porous structure and - for comparative purposes - to model materials such as coke, pumice and polyamide agglomerates. The research was conducted with the use of a special test stand that enables measuring the gas permeability with respect to three flow orientations compared with symmetric cubic-shaped samples. The research results show an explicit impact of the flow direction on the permeability of materials porous, which results from their anisotropic internal structures. The anisotropy coefficient and permeability effective coefficient of such materials was determined and an experimental evaluation of the value of this coefficient was conducted with respect to the gas stream and the total pressure drop across the porous deposit. The process of gas permeability was considered in the category of hydrodynamics of gas flow through porous deposits. It is important to broaden the knowledge of gas hydrodynamics assessment in porous media so far unrecognised for the development of a new generation of clean energy sources, especially in the context of biogas or raw gas production.