POROSITY, PERMEABILITY AND TORTUOSITY RELATIONSHIP IN BINARY SPHERICAL PARTICALS

Abstract

The complexity of processes in industry, which involved the formation of granular beds, has limited information about permeability (k), which is directly related with packing porosity ε and tortuosity T. For an understanding of the relationship between k, ε and T in mixed beds of particles that are different in size, simplified porous media model of binary mixture of spheres have been. A continuous function relating the porosity of a mixture (ε) with the volume fraction (xD) of binary mixture has been established. The incorporation of the proposed porosity model into the conventional Kozeny-Carmen equation gives a good agreement between the measured and predicted permeability vs.xD. Based on this relation and on the dependence of ε vs.xD, a model predicted tortuosity and permeability was obtained, having demonstrated that the tortuosity may significantly alter the permeability of a mixed bed. This search is useful for transport phenomena analysis in granular beds as well as in engineering applications, such as deep bed filtration used for drinking water purification.