A very successful first Conference on Porous Media and its Applications in Science, Engineering and Industry was held in 1996 in Kona, Hawaii. It was attended by various researchers in porous media worldwide. This meeting will build on this conference, so that it reflects the research done internationally in the currently active areas of the topic.
The pioneering works in the area of fluid transport as well as some aspects of heat transport in porous media go back to the beginning of this century. Convective heat transfer in fluid-saturated porous media has gained considerable attention in recent decades due to its relevance in a wide range of applications such as thermal insulation engineering, water movements in geothermal reservoirs, heat pipes, underground spreading of chemical waste, nuclear waste repository, geothermal engineering, grain storage and enhanced recovery of petroleum reservoirs. Radiative heat transfer and multiphase transport processes in porous media, both with and without phase change, have gained extensive attention in recent years. This is due to the wide range of applicability of these research areas in contemporary technology. These applications include, but are not restricted to, areas such as geothermal engineering, building thermal insulation, chemical catalytic reactors, packed cryogenic microsphere insulation, petroleum reservoirs, direct contact heat exchangers, coal combustors, nuclear waste repositories, and heat pipe technology.
Several applications related to porous media require a detailed analysis of convective heat transfer in different geometrical shapes, orientations and configurations. Based on the specific applications, the flow in the porous medium may be internal or external. Most of the studies in porous media carried out until the past two decades are based on the Darcy flow model, which in turn is based on the assumption of creeping flow through an infinitely extended uniform medium. However,
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Contact: Tressa Gaffaney
tgaffane@duke.poly.edu
781-260-3743
Engineering Conferences International
24-Jan-2007