This document details the author's research activities realized between 1996 and 2010. They focus mostly on flow and heat and mass transfer in porous media, at both process and phenomena spatial scales. At process scale, liquid phase distribution in a trickle bed was particularly studied. A model for heat and mass transfer in fabrics was also proposed and validated. At local scale, liquid flow in a structured porous media was simulated. Results were successfully compared with experimental measurements of flow direction and velocity gradient using micro- electrodes. In a second part, more prospective studies related to parameter estimation and global and dynamic process optimisation are presented. The aim is to develop a methodology for the process scale-up and optimal control, from the building of mathematical models, experimental validation, numerical simulation and optimisation.
