Transport and Deposition of Particles onto Homogeneous and Chemically Heterogeneous Porous Media Geometries

Particle transport and deposition in porous media are central to a wide gamut of natural and engineering processes. In order to establish optimal macroscopic performance, it is essential to understand the microscopic colloid transport fundamentals that ultimately manifest at the macroscopic scale. The present body of work intends to provide an insight into the fundamentals of particle transport and deposition onto ideal porous media geometries. An Eulerian model, was developed to evaluate particle deposition rates onto homogeneous and heterogeneous surfaces of two model geometries—a spherical collector and a cylindrical microchannel. For a homogeneous spherical collector, in the absence of Electrostatic Double Layer interactions, the correctness of the Levich solution was established for Brownian particle deposition. Further, it was shown that surface chemical heterogeneity can be effectively tuned to design novel uidized bed filters. Surface heterogeneity in cylindrical channels was identified as an effective tool in drug targeting and controlling analyte/biomolecule transport in micro uidic devices.;Keywords: Particle deposition, Convection-Diffusion-Migration equation, Eulerian analysis, Patterned Heterogeneity.