ABSTRACT
Theories initially developed to describe transport phenomena through the classical porous medium “soil” and “ground” (Darcy 1856) are encountered literally everywhere in everyday life, in nature, and in technical applications. The reason is that except metals, some plastics and dense rocks, almost all solids and semisolid materials can be considered as “porous” to varying degrees. Hence, there exist many types of different technology that depend on or make use of theories in porous media. The most prominent examples are given in the field of (1) hydrology, which deals with the water movement in earth and soil structures (e.g., dams, wells, filter beds, sewage), (2) petroleum engineering, which deals with exploration and production of oil and gas, and (3) chemical engineering (e.g., heterogeneous catalysis, chromatography, in particular, gel chromatography, separation processes using porous polymers, biological, and inorganic membranes). Also it has been long discovered that granular material sintering (Chen et al. 2005) is a very large tonnage technology, where pore structures are significant, and finds application in manufacturing ceramic products, paper, textile, and so forth.
