Two-phase flow in porous media: local non-equilibrium model

The assumption of local thermal non-equilibrium that leads to a one-temperature macroscopic heat equation is often called into question. This is the case, for instance, when describing the water flooding of an overhead nuclear debris bed with an important heat source term in the solid phase. Using a technique of volume averaging as described in Carbonell and Whitaker (1984), Zanotti and Carbonell (1984), Quintard and Whitaker (1993), and Quintard et al. (1996), we obtain, starting with the pore-scale equations and under some constraints, a three-equation or three-temperature macroscopic model for describing heat transfer in a porous medium subject to a two-phase flow. Effective properties can be calculated from several local closure problems which are given in the paper. These closure problems are solved in the case of simple unit cells. (authors)