Search Results (186)

Improving photovoltaic (PV) panel performance under extreme climatic conditions is critical for advancing sustainable energy systems. In hyper-arid regions, elevated operating temperatures significantly reduce panel efficiency. This study investigates and compares three cooling techniques—air cooling, water cooling, and porous media cooling—using thermal and electrical modeling based on CFD simulations in ANSYS. The numerical model replicates a PV system operating under peak solar irradiance (900 W/m²) and realistic ambient conditions in Adrar, Algeria. Simulation results show that air cooling leads to a modest temperature reduction of 6 °C and a marginal efficiency gain of 0.25%. Water cooling, employing a top-down laminar flow, reduces cell temperature by over 35 °C and improves net electrical output by 30.9%, despite pump energy consumption. Porous media cooling, leveraging passive evaporation through gravel, decreases panel temperature by around 30 °C and achieves a net output gain of 26.3%. Mesh sensitivity and validation against experimental data support the accuracy of the model. These findings highlight the significant potential of water and porous material cooling strategies to enhance PV performance in hyper-arid environments. The study also demonstrates that porous media can deliver high thermal effectiveness with minimal energy input, making it a suitable low-cost option for off-grid applications. Future work will integrate long-term climate data, real diffuser geometries, and experimental validation to further refine these models. Full article

Porous media have great application prospects, such as transpiration cooling for the aerospace industry. The main challenge for the prediction of gas permeability includes the geometrical complexity and high Knudsen number of gas flow at the nano-scale to micro-scale, leading to failure of the conventional Darcy’s law. To address these issues, the Quartet Structure Generation Set (QSGS) method is improved to construct anisotropic and heterogeneous three-dimensional porous media, and the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) with the multiple relaxation time (MRT) collision operator is adopted. Using MRT-LBM, the pressure boundary conditions at the inlet and outlet are firstly dealt with using the moment-based boundary conditions, demonstrating good agreement with the analytical solutions in two benchmark tests of three-dimensional Poiseuille flow and flow through a body-centered cubic array of spheres. Combined with the Bosanquet-type effective viscosity model and Maxwellian diffuse reflection boundary condition, the gas flow at high Knudsen (Kn) numbers in three-dimensional porous media is simulated to study the relationship between pore-scale anisotropy, heterogeneity and Kn, and permeability and micro-scale slip effects in porous media. The slip factor is positively correlated with the anisotropic factor, which means that the high Kn effect is stronger in anisotropic structures. There is no obvious correlation between the slip factor and heterogeneity factor. Full article

Proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers (PEMWEs) are a promising technology for green hydrogen production. However, the adoption of PEMWE-based hydrogen production systems remains limited due to several challenges, including high material costs, limited performance and durability, and difficulties in scaling the technology. Computational modeling serves as a powerful tool to address these challenges by optimizing system design, improving material performance, and reducing overall costs, thereby accelerating the commercial rollout of PEMWE technology. Despite this, conventional models often oversimplify key components, such as porous transport and catalyst layers, by assuming constant porosity and neglecting the spatial heterogeneity found in real electrodes. This simplification can significantly impact the accuracy of performance predictions and the overall efficiency of electrolyzers. This study develops a mathematical framework for modeling variable porosity distributions—including constant, linearly graded, and stepwise profiles—and derives analytical expressions for permeability, effective diffusivity, and electrical conductivity. These functions are integrated into a three-dimensional multi-domain COMSOL simulation to assess their impact on electrochemical performance and transport behavior. The results reveal that although porosity variations have minimal effect on polarization at low voltages, they significantly influence internal pressure, species distribution, and gas evacuation at higher loads. A notable finding is that reversing stepwise porosity—placing high porosity near the membrane rather than the channel—can alleviate oxygen accumulation and improve current density. A multi-factor comparison highlights this reversed configuration as the most favorable among the tested strategies. The proposed modeling approach effectively connects porous media theory and system-level electrochemical analysis, offering a flexible platform for the future design of porous electrodes in PEMWE and other energy conversion systems. Full article

This study investigates the effects of anode and cathode inlet flow rates (ṁ) on the power performance of bipolar plates in a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). The primary objective is to derive optimal flow rate conditions by comparatively analyzing concentration loss in the I−V curve and crossover phenomena at the anode, thereby establishing flow rates that prevent reactant depletion and water flooding. A single-cell computational model was constructed by assembling a commercial bipolar plate with a gas diffusion layer (GDL), catalyst layer (CL), and proton exchange membrane (PEM). The model simulates current density generated by electrochemical oxidation-reduction reactions. Hydrogen and oxygen were supplied at a 1:3 ratio under five proportional flow rate conditions: hydrogen (${\dot{m}}_{H_2}$ = 0.76–3.77 LPM) and oxygen (${\dot{m}}_{O_2}$ = 2.39–11.94 LPM). The Butler–Volmer equation was employed to model voltage drop due to overpotential, while numerical simulations incorporated contact resistivity, surface permeability, and porous media properties. Simulation results demonstrated a 24.40% increase in current density when raising ${\dot{m}}_{H_2}$ from 2.26 to 3.02 LPM and ${\dot{m}}_{O_2}$ from 7.17 to 9.56 LPM. Further increases to ${\dot{m}}_{H_2}$ = 3.77 LPM and ${\dot{m}}_{O_2}$ = 11.94 LPM yielded a 10.20% improvement, indicating that performance enhancements diminish beyond a critical threshold. Conversely, lower flow rates (${\dot{m}}_{H_2}$ = 0.76 and 1.5 LPM, ${\dot{m}}_{O_2}$ = 2.39 and 4.67 LPM) induced hydrogen-depleted regions, triggering crossover phenomena that exacerbated anode contamination and localized flooding. Full article

Black phosphorus (BP) nanoflakes have attracted interest as an antimicrobial material for wound healing and implant-associated infections due to their bactericidal activity without the use of antibiotics. Hydrogels are frequently used as a delivery system; however, most research uses photonic activation in the form of near-infrared (NIR) laser stimulation to cause rapid BP degradation, reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, and a localized photothermal effect. For implant-coating applications, using NIR laser stimulation could be challenging in practice, especially for porous orthopedic implants. This article investigates whether BP nanoflakes, suspended in Pluronic F127 (F127) hydrogels, remain effective against Staphylococcus aureus without photonic activation. The experimental results showed 89.4 ± 7.6% bacterial inhibition from BP nanoflakes at a 5120 µg/mL concentration via passive diffusion in F127; however, it could not kill all the bacteria present. It is hypothesized that the F127 gel interface could create a barrier between the bacteria, which continue to multiply in media, and the antimicrobial black phosphorus compound, which degrades in the F127. Full article

Urban densification associated with rapid urbanization has weakened horizontal ventilation in cities. Previous studies point out that building-height variability can enhance vertical ventilation, while most of them rely on idealized models that overlook the complexity of real urban environments. This study analyzes 20 actual urban blocks using CFD simulations, considering average building height, building density, and height standard deviation. The results show that areas with low-rise, uniform buildings exhibit superior pollutant dispersion, while mid- and high-rise zones experience complex turbulence and pollutant accumulation. Ventilation performance peaks when the height standard deviation ranges between 35 and 40. These findings underscore that optimizing urban form for vertical ventilation requires a combined strategy of density control and height variation. Realistic building group models more accurately capture airflow dynamics and provide valuable insights for the design of effective vertical ventilation corridors and the enhancement of urban pollutant dispersion. Full article

Vibrational double diffusion has gained increasing attention in recent studies due to its role in enhancing mixing, disrupting thermal boundary layers, and stabilizing convection structures, especially in nanofluids and porous media. This study focuses on the case of two-phase nanofluid flow in the presence of vibrational effects. The flow domain is a fined chamber that is filled with a non-Darcy porous medium. Two concentration formulations are proposed for the species concentration and nanoparticle concentration. The thermal radiation is in both the x- and y-directions, while the flow domain is considered to be inclined. The solution technique depends on an effective finite volume method. The periodic behaviors of the stream function, Nusselt numbers, and Sherwood numbers against the progressing time are presented and interpreted. From the major results, a significant reduction in harmonic behaviors of the stream function is obtained as the lengths of the fins are raised while the gradients of the temperature and concentration are improved. Also, a higher rate of heat and mass transfer is obtained when the vibration frequency is raised. Furthermore, for fixed values of the Rayleigh number and vibration frequency (Ra = 10⁴, σ = 500), the heat transfer coefficient improves by 27.2% as the fin length increases from 0.1 to 0.25. Full article

Numerical modeling was conducted to study the capture of particles diffusing in porous media with traps. The pores are cylindrical in shape, and the traps are randomly distributed along the cylindrical surfaces of the pores. The dynamics of particle capture by the traps, as well as the filling of the traps, were investigated. In general, the decrease in the number of particles follows an exponential trend, with a characteristic time determined by the trap concentration. However, at longer times, extended plateaus emerge in the particle distribution function. Additionally, the dynamics of the interface boundary corresponding to the median trap filling (M = 0.5) were examined. This interface separates regions where traps are filled with a probability greater than 0.5 from regions where traps are filled with a probability less than 0.5. The motion of the interface over time was found to follow a logarithmic dependence. The influence of the radius of the pore on the capture on traps, which are placed on the internal surface of the cylinders, was investigated. The different dependencies of the extinction time on the number of traps were found at different radii of pores the first time. Full article

In this study, we propose a generalized framework based on the Simple Equations Method (SEsM) for finding exact solutions to systems of fractional nonlinear partial differential equations (FNPDEs). The key developments over the original SEsM in the proposed analytical framework include the following: (1) an extension of the original SEsM by constructing the solutions of the studied FNPDEs as complex composite functions which combine two single composite functions, comprising the power series of the solutions of two simple equations or two special functions with different independent variables (different wave coordinates); (2) an extension of the scope of fractional wave transformations used to reduce the studied FNPDEs to different types of ODEs, depending on the physical nature of the studied FNPDEs and the type of selected simple equations. One variant of the proposed generalized SEsM is applied to a mathematical generalization inspired by the classical Boussinesq model. The studied time-fractional Boussinesq-like system describes more intricate or multiphase environments, where classical assumptions (such as constant wave speed and energy conservation) are no longer applicable. Based on the applied SEsM variant, we assume that each system variable in the studied model supports multi-wave dynamics, which involves combined propagation of two distinct waves traveling at different wave speeds. As a result, numerous new multi-wave solutions including combinations of different hyperbolic, elliptic, and trigonometric functions are derived. To visualize the wave dynamics and validate the theoretical results, some of the obtained analytical solutions are numerically simulated. The new analytical solutions obtained in this study can contribute to the prediction and control of more specific physical processes, including diffusion in porous media, nanofluid dynamics, ocean current modeling, multiphase fluid dynamics, as well as several geophysical phenomena. Full article

This study advances the theory of power-law fluid infiltration grouting by developing spherical and columnar diffusion models rooted in fractal porous media theory and power-law rheological equations. An analytical solution for determining the slurry diffusion radius is derived and validated through laboratory experiments and numerical simulations. Key findings include the following: (1) The fractal permeability constant demonstrates an exponential dependence on the rheological index (n), with a critical threshold at n = 0.4. Below this threshold, the constant asymptotically approaches zero (slope < 0.1), while beyond it, sensitivity intensifies exponentially, attaining 0.48 at n = 0.9. (2) Non-linear positive correlations exist between the slurry diffusion radius and both the grouting pressure (P) and the water–cement ratio (W/C). Spherical diffusion dominates over columnar diffusion, with their ratio shifting from 1:0.96 at P = 0.1 MPa to 1:0.82 at P = 0.5 MPa. The diffusion distance differential increases from 22 mm to 38 mm as the W/C rises from 0.5 to 0.7, attributable to reduced interfacial shear resistance from decreasing slurry viscosity and yield stress. (3) Experimental validation confirms exponentially decaying model errors: spherical grouting errors decrease from 21.54% (t = 5 s) to 8.43% (t = 15 s) and columnar errors from 25.45% to 10.17%, both within the 50% engineering tolerance. (4) Numerical simulations show that the meander fractal dimension (48 mm) demonstrates a higher sensitivity than the volume fractal dimension (37 mm), with both dimensions reaching maximum values. These findings establish a theoretical framework for optimizing grouting design in heterogeneous porous media. Full article

This study systematically investigates the formation mechanism and development characteristics of the “foamy oil” phenomenon during pressure depletion development of high-viscosity crude oil through a combination of physical experiments and numerical simulations. Using Venezuelan foamy oil as the research subject, an innovative heterogeneous pore-etched glass model was constructed to simulate the pressure depletion process, revealing for the first time that bubble growth predominantly occurs during the migration stage. Experimental results demonstrate that heavy components significantly delay degassing by stabilizing gas–liquid interfaces, while the continuous gas–liquid diffusion effect explains the unique development characteristics of foamy oil—high oil recovery and delayed phase transition—from a microscopic perspective. A multi-scale coupling analysis method was established: molecular-scale simulations were employed to model component diffusion behavior. By improving the traditional Volume of Fluid (VOF) method and introducing diffusion coefficients, a synergistic model integrating a single momentum equation and fluid volume fraction was developed to quantitatively characterize the dynamic evolution of bubbles. Simulation results indicate significant differences in dominant controlling factors: oil phase viscosity has the greatest influence (accounting for ~50%), followed by gas component content (~35%), and interfacial tension the least (~15%). Based on multi-factor coupling analysis, an empirical formula for bubble growth incorporating diffusion coefficients was proposed, elucidating the intrinsic mechanism by which heavy components induce unique development effects through interfacial stabilization, viscous inhibition, and dynamic diffusion. This research breaks through the limitations of traditional production dynamic analysis, establishing a theoretical model for foamy oil development from the perspective of molecular-phase behavior combined with flow characteristics. It not only provides a rational explanation for the “high oil production, low gas production” phenomenon but also offers theoretical support for optimizing extraction processes (e.g., gas component regulation, viscosity control) through quantified parameter weightings. The findings hold significant scientific value for advancing heavy oil recovery theory and guiding efficient foamy oil development. Future work will extend to studying multiphase flow coupling mechanisms in porous media, laying a theoretical foundation for intelligent control technology development. Full article

Longitudinal dispersion coefficient is a key parameter governing solute transport in porous media, with significant implications for various industrial processes. However, the impact of microfractures on the longitudinal dispersion coefficient remains insufficiently understood. In this study, pore-scale direct numerical simulations are performed to analyze solute transport in microfractured porous media during unstable miscible displacement. Spatiotemporal concentration profiles were fitted to the analytical solution of the convection–dispersion equation to quantify the longitudinal dispersion coefficient across different microfracture configurations. The results indicate that the longitudinal dispersion coefficient is highly sensitive to microfracture characteristics. Specifically, an increased projection length of microfractures in the flow direction and a reduced lateral projection length enhance longitudinal dispersion at the outlet. When Peclet number ≥1, the longitudinal dispersion coefficient follows a three-stage variation pattern along the flow direction, with microfracture connectivity and orientation dominating its scale sensitivity. Furthermore, both diffusion-dominated and mixed advective-diffusion regimes are observed. In diffusion-dominated regimes, significant channeling alters the applicability of traditional scaling laws, with the relationship between longitudinal dispersion coefficient and porosity holding only when the Peclet number is below 0.07. These results provide a comprehensive scale-up framework for CO₂ miscible flooding in unconventional reservoirs and CO₂ storage in saline aquifers, offering valuable insights for the numerical modeling of heterogeneous reservoir development. Full article

Clarifying the migration law of heavy metal pollutants in soil is the key prerequisite for its treatment. Because most heavy metal pollutants possess color-rendering properties, it is theoretically feasible to use synthesized transparent soil to simulate the migration and diffusion of heavy pollutants in soil. In order to assess the feasibility of employing transparent soil for investigating heavy metal migration (singly and multiply) in porous media, the fluctuation rates and concentration distribution of pollutants were measured from both vertical and horizontal perspectives. Simultaneously, the effects of temperature, dry density, and initial concentration on heavy metal migration were investigated simultaneously, while analyzing changes in heavy metal occurrence forms during the migration process. The study shows that transparent soil accurately simulated heavy metal migration with a deviation of less than 10% compared to sandy soil. The migration of Cu(II) in a single heavy metal migration test was greatly affected by three factors. Among them, both Cu(II) and Cr(VI) are similarly affected by the initial concentration, and favorable migration occurs at an initial concentration of 1000 mg/kg. The heat source temperature and initial concentration significantly impact the migration of single Cr(VI) and composite heavy metals. Under the influence of heat source temperature, the increase in heavy metal migration rate is associated with an increase in the proportion of exchangeable (EXC) and carbonate-bound (Carb). Studying the interaction mechanism between these factors is crucial for accurately predicting the transport behavior of heavy metal pollutants in porous media and providing a scientific basis for environmental protection and treatment. Full article

One of the key challenges in optimizing the transfer characteristics of carbon cloth gas diffusion layers (GDLs) is accurately evaluating their effective transport properties. In this work, a stochastic reconstruction algorithm based on structural parameters was developed to generate virtual carbon cloth GDLs with varying porosities, carbon fiber diameters, and length-to-thickness ratios. A pore-scale random walk model was also developed to predict the permeability, tortuosity, and effective diffusivity of the GDLs with well-validated accuracy. The results show that higher porosity and larger carbon fiber diameters enhance the diffusion and transfer of oxygen through the GDL, and when the length-to-thickness ratio exceeds 2, the permeability stabilizes. The model developed in this study offers the advantages of low computational cost, accurate representation of the material’s microstructure, and broad applicability, making it a powerful and convenient tool for predicting the transport properties of porous media. Full article

The instability of the double-diffusive convection of an Oldroyd-B fluid in a vertical Brinkman porous layer caused by temperature and solute concentration differences with the Soret effect is studied. Based on perturbation theory, an Orr–Sommerfeld eigenvalue problem is derived and numerically solved using the Chebyshev collocation method. The effects of dimensionless parameters on the neutral stability curves and the growth rate curves are examined. It is found that Lewis number Le, Darcy–Prandtl number Pr_D, and normalized porosity η have critical values: When below these thresholds, the parameters promote instability, whereas exceeding them leads to suppression of instability. In addition, for Le < Le_c2 (a critical value of Le), S_r strengthens the instability of the flow, while for Le > Le_c2, S_r suppresses it. These results highlight the complex coupling of heat and mass transfer in Oldroyd-B fluids within porous media. Full article