Pores integrated fractal (PIF) analysis on transportation in porous media considering spatial distribution of pores and genuine tortuosity

•A fractal model is established for reproducing the microporous structure of porous media in consideration of spatial pore distribution and the physical tortuosity, from which perspective the fractal model is superior to most of the existing models.•Analytical solutions based on the PIF model for precisely predicting the crucial parameters in different transportation processes have been obtained and validated by comparing with experimental results.•Spatial distributions of pores in realistic samples are acquired, based on which the influence of the equivalent pore distributions is specifically analyzed in the study.•The influence of specific pore size distribution on macroscopic parameters is explored, including span range of pores, dominant pore size as well as the pore bimodal distribution.