Models for non-isothermal compositional gas-liquid flow and transport in porous media

Multiphase flow processes in porous media occur in many different fields of applications. One may basically distinguish between natural and technical porous media. A classical porous medium is the natural subsurface while there is still a number of technical porous media where flow and transport plays an important role and for which some basic model concepts developed for subsurface problems can be applied or at least adapted. One such technical porous medium is, for example, the gas diffusion layer of a fuel cell where the porous layer has the purpose of controlling the gas transport from the gas discharge channel to the reaction layer and concurrently the displacement of liquid water that is produced by the reaction. Major subsurface applications treated in this work are contaminant spreading in the saturated and unsaturated zone, thermally enhanced in-situ remediation methods, and the large topic of carbon dioxide storage in deep geologic formations. The latter got recently much attention in the discussions how to mitigate greenhouse gas concentrations and global warming. This work deals in particular with the numerical modeling of gas-liquid flow in porous media, thereby considering non-isothermal and compositional effects. The basic characteristics of the processes and different applications are explained and discussed. The fundamental concepts for the physical and mathematical models are introduced including their specific adaption to certain problems and a brief discussion of numerical solution algorithms. A large chapter presents example applications that illustrate the basic processes and phenomena by simulation results.