Study of electro-osmotic flows in microchannels packed with variable porosity media via lattice Boltzmann method

In this article, electro-osmotic flow (EOF) in microchannels packed with a variable porosity medium is studied using the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). The present lattice Boltzmann model is constructed based on the generalized porous medium equation for EOF and validated by comparing the numerical solution with the approximate analytical solution. A detailed parametric study has been presented for EOF in microchannels filled with a variable porosity medium. It is found that the variations of porosity, particle size, ζ potential, applied electric field strength, and tortuosity significantly affect the flow pattern. Numerical results also indicate that the variation of the porosity near the wall has an important influence on the velocity profile, and should not be neglected in practice.