Mass and Heat Transport Models for Analysis of the Drying Process in Porous Media: A Review and Numerical Implementation

The modeling and numerical simulation of drying in porous media is discussed in this work by revisiting the different models of moisture migration during the drying process of porous media as well as their restrictions and applications. Among the models and theories, we consider those are ranging from simple ones like the diffusion theory to more complex ones like the receding front theory, the model of Philip and de Vries, Luikov’s theory, Krischer’s theory, and finally Whitaker’s model, in which all mass, heat transport, and phase change (evaporation) are taken into account. The review of drying models as such serves as the basis for the development of a framework for numerical simulation. In order to demonstrate this, the system of equations governing the drying process in porous media resulting from Whitaker’s model is presented and used in our numerical implementation. A numerical simulation of drying is presented and discussed to show the capability of the implementation.