Water harvesting through capillary network in a porous domain

Porous media enabling a fluid to flow through them find multiple applications in engineering, geothermal sciences, biosensors, and oil recovery. Transport phenomenon in porous media depends on the porosity, the pore size distribution and the connectivity. In this study, we propose a methodology to design capillary networks in 2-D and 3-D by connecting multiple fluid sources to one single outlet. The network is morphed every time a new source is connected to ensure maximum flow access through the porous medium. The generated networks are compared to networks with minimum volume and surface area. The impact on the number of fluid sources and the radius ratio between channels are discussed. The Hess-Murray’s law suggests that the optimal value for the radius ratio , while we discover that a higher and wide range of is able to enhance the flow performance of the capillary network. The proposed model can help to understand how to improve the fluid transport through the porous domain by predicting the fluid network configuration, for a given porosity, allowing to harvest the maximum flow rate.