Numerical Study of Gas Flow in Super Nanoporous Materials Using the Direct Simulation Monte-Carlo Method

Abstract

The direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method, which is a probabilistic particle-based gas kinetic simulation approach, is employed in the present work to describe the physics of rarefied gas flow in super nanoporous materials (also known as mesoporous). The simulations are performed for different material porosities (0.5≤ϕ≤0.9), Knudsen numbers (0.05≤Kn≤1.0), and thermal boundary conditions (constant wall temperature and constant wall heat flux) at an inlet-to-outlet pressure ratio of 2. The present computational model captures the structure of heat and fluid flow in porous materials with various pore morphologies under rarefied gas flow regime and is applied to evaluate hydraulic tortuosity, permeability, and skin friction factor of gas (argon) flow in super nanoporous materials. The skin friction factors and permeabilities obtained from the present DSMC simulations are compared with the theoretical and numerical models available in the literature. The results show that the ratio of apparent to intrinsic permeability, hydraulic tortuosity, and skin friction factor increase with decreasing the material porosity. The hydraulic tortuosity and skin friction factor decrease with increasing the Knudsen number, leading to an increase in the apparent permeability. The results also show that the skin friction factor and apparent permeability increase with increasing the wall heat flux at a specific Knudsen number.