Steam condensation waves in water-saturated porous rock (Q1773857)

The authors formulate balance equations for mass and thermal energy which govern the condensation of steam injected into a linear porous medium containing water. The condensation process is modeled by a rate equation based on a simple heat transfer model. The authors describe the steam condensation front as a traveling wave solution of boundary value problem for an ordinary differential equation. Under the approximation that the pressure variations are negligible within the front, the authors find the traveling wave for injection of high-quality steam using a combination of phase-plane analysis and numerical calculation of orbits.