Mathematical Model of Fluid Front Dynamics Driven by Porous Media Pumps
- Authors:
- A. Benavent-Claró, Y. Alvarez-Braña, F. Benito-Lopez, L. Basabe-Desmonts, A. Hernandez-Machado
- Year:
- 2024
- Journal:
- Arxiv.org
- DOI:
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.14666
- Description:
-
Air-permeable porous media hosts air within their pores. Upon removal from the material’s interior, these porous media
have the tendency to replenish the air, effectively acting as a suction pump. Therefore, the technique used to convert
a porous media into a pump, consists of degassing the material to remove their air inside. The suction property when
recovering the air, can be used to move a liquid through a microfluidic channel, studying the dynamics of the liquid-air
front. In this article, we have developed a theoretical mathematical model that precisely characterize the behavior of
this kind of pumps and the dynamics of the liquid-air front. This model allows us to use porous media pumps as very
accurate devices to move liquids in a completely controlled way, being able to obtain characteristic properties of fluids
such as viscosity or the pressure applied to them. We have tested it using experimental data from the literature, and we
have been able to observe that the theory fits satisfactorily with the experiments, being able to affirm that the model is
correctly satisfied. This type of pump is of great interest to the scientific community because of its small size and the
fact that it operates without any external power source.