Prof Zhi-Guo Qu

Department of Thermo-Fluid Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

Multi-Scale Process for Adsorption in Porous Media

The multiscale heat and mass transfer process in porous media is a widespread phenomenon that exists pervasively in multiscale gas adsorption for shale gas matrix and adsorbent bed. In this keynote lecture, a modified lattice Boltzmann model is developed on the pore-scale to accurately predict the effective diffusivity of heterogeneous shale matrix, where the multicomponent and irregular morphological features are fully considered. The effects of shale porosity, average gain diameter, orangic matrix volume fraction and diffusivity, and irregular structures on the matrix diffusion ability are investigated. A modified empirical formula is proposed to effectively capture the heterogeneous shale matrix diffusion ability. The gas adsorption and separation on porous surface of the absorbent at different scales are solved by a multiscale method that couples LBM with grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC). In interfacial boundary, saturation adsorption capacities are obtained by GCMC method to replace empirical values. Langmuir–Freundlich model and linear fitting formula are used to calculate the saturation adsorption capacities in Langmuir adsorption kinetics model and the adsorption heat in heat transfer in LBM model at mesoscopic level. Then, the mass transfer process of CO₂/CH₄ mixture gases in Cu-BTC membranes is investigated by the above multi-scale method. The proposed coupled method can be helpful in the design of efficient membranes.

CV: Professor Qu is a full professor in the School of Energy & Power Engineering at Xi’an Jiaotong University. He obtained his PhD degree in engineering thermophysics from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2005. He worked as a visiting scholar at Advanced Heat Transfer, LLC USA and Pennsylvania State University in 2006 and 2013. His main research interests include thermal management of energy system, phase change heat transfer, transport phenomena in porous media, mass transfer for CO₂ absorption. He has published 130 SCI indexed papers in peer-reviewed journals and has been serving as the editorial board member for several journals. Prof. Qu has been awarded Second Class National Award for the State Scientific and Technological Progress (Rank 2) and Second Class National Award for Technological Invention (Rank 3). He is a recipient of Young Scholars of the Yangtze River, National Young Top-notch Talent Support Program, China National Funds for Excellent Young Scientists, Young Scholar Fund from Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation of China and the Ministry of education program for New Century Excellent Talents.