A Priori Parameter Estimation for the Thermodynamically Constrained Averaging Theory: Species Transport in a Saturated Porous Medium

The thermodynamically constrained averaging theory (TCAT) has been used to develop a simplified entropy inequality (SEI) for several major classes of macroscale porous medium models in previous works. These expressions can be used to formulate hierarchies of models of varying sophistication and fidelity. A limitation of the TCAT approach is that the determination of model parameters has not been addressed other than the guidance that an inverse problem must be solved. In this work we show how a previously derived SEI for single-fluid-phase flow and transport in a porous medium system can be reduced for the specific instance of diffusion in a dilute system to guide model closure. We further show how the parameter in this closure relation can be reliably predicted, adapting a Green’s function approach used in the method of volume averaging. Parameters are estimated for a variety of both isotropic and anisotropic media based upon a specified microscale structure. The direct parameter evaluation method is verified by comparing to direct numerical simulation over a unit cell at the microscale. This extension of TCAT constitutes a useful advancement for certain classes of problems amenable to this estimation approach.