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Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 1–7

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Energy Conversion and Management


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Numerical investigation of vapor–liquid heat and mass transfer


in porous media
Chengyun Xin, Zhonghao Rao ⇑, Xinyu You, Zhengchang Song, Dongtai Han
School of Electric Power Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A modified separate flow model (MSFM) is developed to numerically investigate the heat and mass trans-
Received 21 August 2013 fer behaviors in porous media in this paper. In the MSFM, the effects of capillarity, liquid phase change,
Accepted 18 October 2013 nonisothermal two-phase region and the local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) are considered. The vapor
and liquid velocities are both converted into intermediate variables in the simulations and conveniently
convergent solutions are obtained because a special upwind scheme for the convection or boiling heat
Keywords: transfer source and variable convergence factors are simultaneously employed. Two typical numerical
Heat and mass transfer
examples with a one-dimension model of porous media are studied that the high heat fluxes are vertical
Porous media
Modified separate flow model
and parallel to the fluid flow direction, respectively. And the results indicated that the influence of heat
Local thermal non-equilibrium flux direction on heat and fluid flow behaviors in porous media is great. The nonisothermal phenomenon
in the two-phase region is obvious for the former while the LTNE phenomenon is remarkable in the two-
phase region for the latter. The results also showed several similar behaviors that the saturation profile is
weakly discontinuous on the phase interface and a countercurrent flow exists in two-phase region.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction equations based on up-scaling technology are widely used in


simulations in porous media.
Heat transfer and two-phase flow in porous media has attracted Experimental observations [11] were reported on boiling in a
lots of interest in many diverse fields such as transpiration cooling, vertical circular by heating from below and cooled from above
petroleum engineering, energy storage and recovery, nuclear waste and it was found that the liquid and vapor counter percolation
disposal, heat pipes, drying of porous media in recent years [1–4]. could carry heat across the two-phase zone (the liquid evaporated
The interstitial fluids in porous media are usually subject to at the heating surface and the vapor condensed at the boundary
vaporization, condensation and transport due to pressure or between the liquid zone and two-phase zone) and the two-phase
temperature gradients. Because of the small pore dimensions and zone was nearly isothermal. Heat and mass transfer characteristics
extremely complex pore geometry, the interfacial tension effect of a sand-steam system heated at the top and cooled at the bottom
is obvious that the system variables such as individual phase were investigated by Udell [12,13] and it was also indicated that
pressures, liquid–vapor interfacial geometry, and fluid velocities the temperature was nearly isothermal in the two-phase region.
on the pore level is difficult to obtain. To solve this problem, the Topin et al. [14] and Rahli et al. [15] conducted experiments in por-
macroscopic averaging of microscopic phenomena, namely ous media composed of small bronze spheres and heated from the
upscaling technology can be used. There are several different ways side, and it was demonstrated that the temperature in the two-
of up-scaling for dispersion in porous media, such as the volume phase zone was seen to decrease with an N-shaped curve, and
average method [5], the homogenization method [6], the ensemble the reasons were probably the combined effects of flow and
average method [7] and the method of moments [8], and so on. As phase-change. Numerical investigations have also been reported.
the equations based on up-scaling technology are often suitable to The separate flow model (SFM) was described by Bear [9] to solve
spatially periodic geometric structure but accompanied with the the two-phase problems in porous media. In the SFM, the two
closure problem, the semi-experiential separate flow model phases are considered as distinct fluids, which results in a large
(SFM) [9]and two-phase mixture model (TPMM) [10] which are number of governing equations, and they are computationally bur-
also based on macroscopic parameters like the conservation densome [10,16]. Ramesh and Torrance [17] successfully solved
the SFM by the front-tracking method, in which compared with
the front-capturing method the mesh reconstruction was neces-
sary to determine the interface between different phases. To avoid
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 516 83592000. mesh reconstruction at every iteration step the two-phase mixture
E-mail address: raozhonghao@cumt.edu.cn (Z. Rao).

0196-8904/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2013.10.047
2 C. Xin et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 1–7

Nomenclature

e porosity Pr Prandtl number


s liquid saturation dp hydraulic diameter (m)
q density (kg/m3) asf aspect ratio
cp specific heat capacity (J/kg K) q heat flux (J/m2 s)
u velocity (m/s) hlg latent heat (J/kg)
t time (s) hsv heat transfer coefficient of vapor (W/m2 K)
h specific enthalpy (J/kg) hsl heat transfer coefficient of liquid (W/m2 K)
Qsf convection or boiling heat flow (J/m3 s) g acceleration of gravity (m/s2)
Qboil boiling heat flow (J/m3 s)
Q volumetric heat source (J/m3 s) Subscripts
T temperature (K) s solid
r interfacial tension (N/m) r relative
J capillary J-function f fluid
Kr relative permeability l liquid
l dynamic viscosity (kg/ms) v vapor
K permeability p pressure
k heat conductivity (W/mK) c capillary pressure
Nu Nusselt number sat saturated
Rep Reynolds number in porous media eff effective

model (TPMM) and the modified SFM were developed based on the 2. Model and method
front-capturing method. The TPMM was initially developed by
Wang and Beckermann [10]. It is widely used, but it is based on 2.1. Model
the assumptions that the two-phase region is isothermal and the
local temperature of fluid and solid is the same at each point. The total mass conservation of fluid phase in porous media can
And the two-phase region temperature used in the TPMM was of- be described as:
ten determined by the inlet or outlet pressure [18,19]. Under the
@ðql s þ qv ð1  sÞÞ
assumptions, numerical computations may be greatly simplified e þ r  ðql~
ul þ qv ~
uv Þ ¼ 0; ð1Þ
but may cause larger errors [14,15]. Hence, a new front-capturing
@t
method still based on the TPMM was developed by Bridge and where e, s, q and u represent porosity, saturation, density and super-
Wetton [20]. However, in the model the liquid-only region was ficial velocity, respectively.
not considered and this staircasing phenomenon of temperature The LTNE equations considering the local convection or boiling
at the same point needs further investigations. Based on an entro- heat exchange between the solid and fluid are following:
py balance in the energy equation, Benard et al. [21] presented a @
new model in which phase region judgements were used to cap- e ½q shl þ qv ð1  sÞhv  þ r  ðql~
u l hl þ q v ~
uv hv Þ
@t l
ture the front with saturation equation supplemented. However,
¼ r  ðkf ;eff rT f Þ þ Q sf ; ð2Þ
the supplemented equation is not necessary in some sense and
can increase the time and space complexity for numerical simula-
tions. Based on the SFM idea, Stubos et al. [22] developed a one-do-
@T s
ð1  eÞcp ¼ r  ðks;eff rT s Þ  Q sf þ Q ; ð3Þ
main formulation, in which Kelin and Clapeyron equations were @t
employed in the two-phase region. where h, Qsf and Q are specific enthalpy, convection and boiling heat
The models mentioned above are all based on the local thermal flow per volume and volumetric heat source, respectively.
equilibrium assumption that fluid temperature is locally equal to The capillary pressure satisfies [25]:
solid temperature. Though this assumption can simplify numerical  e 1=2
simulations, it may be inadequate for a number of problems. Shi pc ¼ pv  pl ¼ rJðsÞ; ð4Þ
and Wang [23] and Yuki et al. [24] numerically investigated the K
two-phase flow in porous media at high heat fluxes, and found that where, r is vapor–liquid interfacial tension, and J(s) is suggested by
the local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) phenomena considering Udell [13] as:
the difference in temperature between the fluid and the solid were
remarkable especially in the two-phase region. However, they
JðsÞ ¼ 1:417ð1  sÞ  2:120ð1  sÞ2 þ 1:263ð1  sÞ3 : ð5Þ
were both based on the TPMM instead of SFM. In this paper, the
front-capturing method is employed that phase regions are judged In porous media, there will be potential three different regions
according to the relations between fluid temperature and satura- for the fluid phase under different conditions:
tion temperature. A modified SFM (MSFM) considering the LTNE
was developed in the simulations. Both the vapor and liquid veloc- (I) A region only with liquid water.
ities are converted into intermediate variables. The function of the (II) A region only with vapor.
primary variables and a special upwind scheme for the convection (III) A region where water and vapor coexist. In this region, vapor
or boiling heat transfer source and Newton’s linear algorithm are pressure relies on both temperature and vapor-water capil-
both employed. lary pressure, therefore the relation [25] is used:
C. Xin et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 1–7 3

 
pcðlv Þ
pv ¼ psat exp : ð6Þ x
qRT f
i-1 i-1/2 i i+1/2 i+1

Taking into account gravity acceleration, the Darcy model [25] Fig. 1. Vertex-centered FVM of cell i.
reflecting relationships of flow velocities with phase pressures is
given by:
2.2. Discretization with the FVM
krb
~
ub ¼ K g Þ b ¼ v ; l;
ðrpb þ qb~ ð7Þ
lb A 1-D steady state model was used in this paper, and the
governing equations are discretized into algebraic equations on
where K is absolute permeability, and kr the relative value. The sim- uniform grids with the finite volume method (FVM). The vertex-
plest correlations of krv and krl are power functions of liquid satura- centered FVM is used to divide the domain into a number of
tion [10,23]: control volumes (cells or elements) where the primary variables
of interest are located at the center of the control volume i shown
krl ¼ s3 ; ð8Þ in Fig. 1, while the intermediate variable, velocity is located on the
interface, because it can be easily calculated with Darcy’ law.
krv ¼ ð1  sÞ3 : ð9Þ The steady-state conservation equations can be described as
Eqs. (20–22), which can be discretized into Eqs. (23–25),
respectively.
The characteristic parameters of the porous media and fluid can
be calculated as following [10,23]: r  ðql~
ul þ qv ~
uv Þ ¼ 0; ð20Þ
2
dp e3 r  ðql~
ul hl þ qv ~
uv hv Þ ¼ r  ðkf ;eff rT f Þ þ Q sf ; ð21Þ
K¼ 2
; ð10Þ
150ð1  eÞ
r  ðks;eff rT s Þ  Q sf þ Q ¼ 0; ð22Þ
ks;eff ¼ ð1  eÞks ; ð11Þ
ðql ul þ qv uv Þiþ1=2  ðql ul þ qv uv Þi1=2 ¼ 0; ð23Þ

kf ;eff ¼ ekf ¼ eðskl þ ð1  sÞkv Þ; ð12Þ ðql ul hl þ qv uv hv Þiþ1=2  ðql ul hl þ qv uv hv Þi1=2


Dx !,
In liquid region : Q sf ¼ hsl asf ðT s  T l Þ: ð13Þ ðkf ;eff Þiþ1=2 ðT f ;iþ1  T f ;i Þ ðkf ;eff Þi1=2 ðT f ;i  T f ;i1 Þ
¼  Dx þ Q sf ; ð24Þ
Dx Dx
In vapor region : Q sf ¼ hsv asf ðT s  T v Þ: ð14Þ
!,
ðks;eff Þiþ1=2 ðT s;iþ1 T f ;i Þ ðks;eff Þi1=2 ðT s;i T s;i1 Þ
 Dx þQ sf þQ ¼ 0:
Boiling heat flux: Dx Dx
 1=2     ð25Þ
gðql  qv Þ cpf ðT s  T sat Þ 1=0:33 1 1:7=0:33
Q boil ¼ sasf lhfg  :
r 0:006hfg Prf
ð15Þ In the above equations, (kf,eff)i±1/2 is calculated by 2(kf,eff)i
(kf,eff)i±1/((kf,eff)i + (kf,eff)i±1), hb,i±1/2 is the function of the primary
variables, and velocities are given by:
In two-phase region:  
ðkrb Þiþ1=2 pb;iþ1  pb;i
ub;iþ1=2 ¼ K þ qb;iþ1=2 g ; ð26Þ
Q sf ¼ Q boil þ ð1  sÞhsv asf ðT s  T l Þ: ð16Þ lb;iþ1=2 Dx

 
Convective heat transfer coefficient in the pores: ðkrb Þi1=2 pb;i  pb;i1
ub;i1=2 ¼ K þ qb;i1=2 g ; ð27Þ
  lb;i1=2 Dx
hsb ¼ ðkb =dp Þ 2:0 þ 1:1Pr1=3 0:6
b Rep ; b ¼ v ; l: ð17Þ
where
where lb;iþ1=2 ¼ 2lb;i lb;iþ1 =ðlb;i þ lb;iþ1 Þ; ð28Þ

qb ub dp lb;i1=2 ¼ 2lb;i lb;i1 =ðlb;i þ lb;i1 Þ; ð29Þ


Rep ¼ ; b ¼ v ; l: ð18Þ
lb
(
ðkrb Þi ub > 0
ðkrb Þiþ1=2 ¼ ; ð30Þ
Specific surface of the solid matrix in the pores: ðkrb Þiþ1 ub < 0

asf ¼ 6ð1  eÞ=dp : ð19Þ (


ðkrb Þi1 ub > 0
ðkrb Þi1=2 ¼ : ð31Þ
ðkrb Þi ub < 0
Eqs. (1–19) are a closed system with primary variables Ts, p and
Tf or s. The primary variables Ts and p are global, while primary
variables Tf and s are not. In regions (I) and (II), Tf is used to denote It can be seen that the source term Q sf for the cell i is the func-
the temperature of liquid and vapor phase, while s is used in the tion of velocity or pressure gradient, and a special treatment is em-
region (III) instead of Tf. Other parameters, such as densities, vis- ployed. Directly calculating Q sf for the cell i needs the velocities of
cosities, and specific enthalpy, are functions of primary variables. the cell i, which are the function of the pressures of the cells i + 1
4 C. Xin et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 1–7

and i  1. Therefore, according to the numerical treatment of the J  DX ¼ FðXm Þ; ð34Þ


source terms in shallow water equations [26], Q sf for the cell i is
where J is the Jacobian matrix associated to F and m is the Newton
separated into the two parts, the half of the source term Q sf ;i1=2
iteration number, the iteration solution of the (m + 1)th step from
and the half of the source term Q sf ;iþ1=2 . Therefore,
Xm+1 = Xm + DX is obtained, and the iteration is repeated until the
Z xiþ1=2 Z xi Z xiþ1=2
convergence conditions are satisfied. In order to improve the con-
Q sf Dx ¼ Q sf dx ¼ Q sf dx þ Q sf dx
xi1=2 xi1=2 xi vergence efficiency, variable relaxation factors are employed in
every iteration by choosing a constant relaxation factor and a
¼ 0:5DxQ sf ;i1=2 þ 0:5DxQ sf ;iþ1=2 ; ð32Þ threshold value for every primary variable. If the absolute increase
where Q sf ;i1=2 can be considered as the virtual source term for the value of the primary variable is more than the threshold value, it is
interface between the cell i  1 and i. And Q sf ;iþ1=2 can be considered regarded as the threshold value keeping the same sign as the in-
as the virtual source term for the interface between the cell i + 1 and crease value, otherwise the constant relaxation factor is used.
i. So, Q sf for the cell i can be discretized by Eq. (32). Q sf ;i1=2 and Two numerical examples of 1-D and steady-state with water or
Q sf ;iþ1=2 can be calculated directly by velocities ub,i1/2 and ub,i+1/2 gi- vapor as working fluid are studied and the properties of the fluid
ven by Eqs. (26) and (27), temperature of the solid and fluid at the used in simulations are ranged in Table 1. Wang and Shi [27] indi-
cell i, and other variables on the interface which need up-wind dis- cated that the temperature and thermal effectiveness of the third
cretization. The above discretization of the source term Q sf for the boundary condition (BC) on the hot surface were reasonable at
cell i makes it a function of the pressure in the three cells i, i  1 all situations, and the use of the third BC was secure with the LTNE
and i + 1, while direct discretization will make it no relationship model. Therefore the hot surface boundary conditions used in this
with the pressure at the cell i, as will make it difficult to obtain a paper are:
convergent solution near the interface of different phase regions. 8
< qhot ¼ hf ðT f  T s Þ ¼ qs þ qf ¼ ks;e @T s þ kf ;e @T f
That is why virtual source term is balanced especially near the y¼L q
@y @y
:
phase interface where pressure distribution is very complex and : f ¼ ek f
qs ð1eÞks
directly influences the fluid flow.
And the cold surface boundary conditions employed in this pa-
2.3. Phase region determination per are:
8
The governing equation based on primary variables is valid over < m0 cf ðT f  T c Þ ¼ hc ðT s  T c Þ
>
the entire domain, including the interface, while different phase re- y ¼ 0 ks;e dT
dy
s
¼ hc ðT s  T c Þ ;
>
:
gions have different primary variables. Therefore, at every itera- T c ¼ 293:15 K
tion, phase state determination at each point is necessary to
choose the suitable equations. The process can be shown as where subscript c denotes cold fluid at the inlet. Those mentioned
follows: above are hot boundary conditions and the flow boundary condi-
tions are:
if state0 ¼¼ 2 and s > 1 then s ¼ 1; state ¼ 1; T f ¼ T f  0:1
y ¼ 0 m ¼ m0 ;
endif
y ¼ L p ¼ p0 ¼ 0:1 MPa;
if state0 ¼¼ 2 and s < 0 then s ¼ 0; state ¼ 0; T f ¼ T f þ 0:1
endif where m0 and p0 denote mass flow rate per unit area and outlet
pressure, respectively.
if state0 ¼¼ 1 and T f > T sat then s ¼ 0:85; state ¼ 2;
¼ p þ 100; T f ¼ T sat 3. Results and discussion
endif
3.1. Transpiration cooling

if state0 ¼¼ 0 and T f <¼ T sat then s ¼ 0:1; state ¼ 2; Transpiration cooling is a way of active heat protection. A cool-
¼ p  100; T f ¼ T sat ant flowing through a heated surface made out of porous media,
endif results in a temperature boundary layer on the surface to decrease
the heat flux through the surface, absorbs heat dramatically by
When phase region determination is carried out with saturation convection, and thus cools the material down. Also, transpiration
pressure Eq. (6), proper adjustments of the primary variables Tf, s cooling can be considered as an active thermal protection mecha-
and p are important for convergent solutions. nism, and it has the potential to reduce heat loads on hypersonic
vehicles, allowing thinner leading edges and sharper noses. Usu-
2.4. Solution of discretized equations ally, a gas is used as the coolant while a liquid has the advantage
that the heat of vaporization can be used as an additional cooling
The above discretized equations derived from discretization of
conservation laws involved in the mathematical model in this pa- Table 1
Thermal and transport properties of water and vapor.
per are nonlinear with the form,
Properties Water Vapor
FðXÞ ¼ 0; ð33Þ
Density (kg/m3) 996 Ideal gas law
where X represents the primary variables. Newton–Raphson itera- Surface tension (N/m) 0.059
tion method is used to solve the nonlinear equations (33). The ini- Specific heat (kJ/(kg K)) 4.17 2.1
Viscosity (106 kg/(m s)) 247:8
24:1410T140 2.77567 + 0.04035T
tial guess X0 for the solutions of Eq. (33) is obtained by assuming
Conductivity (103 W/(m K)) 680 21.994433 + 0.11842T
the primary variables of each cell in the while computational do-
Prandtl number llcp/kl 0.91
main to be linear between a minimum and a maximum values as- Saturation pressure (Pa) 1:186  1010 e
3816:44
T46:13

sumed. Solving the linear equations,


C. Xin et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 1–7 5

mechanism. Water cooling was experimentally demonstrated to be Table 2


extremely effective [28], because it has an extremely high heat of Basic parameters of transpiration cooling.

vaporization. Shi and Wang [23] presented a numerical approach Characteristic size 300 lm
to investigate the transpiration cooling problems with coolant Porosity 0.35
phase change within porous matrix and found that an inverse phe- Height 0.1 m
nomenon that the coolant temperature might be higher than solid Coolant mass flow rate 0.2 kg/(m2 s)
temperature, which was captured by the new LTNE–TPMM. The Heat flux on hot surface hhot(Tf  Ts) = 0.594 MW/m2
Heat transfer coefficient on cold surface 300 W/(m2 K)
physical model in Ref. [23] as shown in Fig. 2 is used in this paper
and the corresponding parameters are ranged in Table 2.
The distributions of saturation and pressure in transpiration
cooling with coolant phase change are shown in Fig. 3. It is clear
that the saturation profile is weakly discontinuous on the phase 101100 1.0
interface, namely saturation is continuous but non-differentiable.
This trend is the same as that in reference [23]. In addition, the sat- 100800 P 0.8
S
uration near the phase interfaces changes more dramatically than
that in the middle of the two-phase region. This trend has also 100500 0.6

P (Pa)
been reported in Refs. [13,20]. It can also been seen that the pres-

S
sure in the single-phase region decreases approximately linearly, 100200
0.4
while the pressure in the two-phase region firstly increases dra-
matically and then decreases quickly. Due to the increasing of pres- 99900
sure along the flowing direction, a countercurrent flow of vapor 0.2
occurs according to Darcy’ law in porous media, as has been also 99600
found by simulations [23] and experiments [11]. In the countercur- 0.0
rent, the liquid evaporates at the heating surface and the vapor
99300
condenses at the interface between the liquid region and two- 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10
phase region, which can enhance heat transfer greatly due to the X (m)
latent heat absorbing and releasing like heat pipes.
Fig. 3. Distributions of pressure and saturation in transpiration cooling.
The distributions of temperature and saturation in transpiration
cooling with coolant phase change are shown in Fig. 4. The numer-
ical solutions demonstrate that the solid temperature is nearly the
in the two-phase region the solid temperature varies slightly while
same as the liquid temperature in the single-phase region, while
the fluid temperature varies dramatically especially near the
they are obviously different in the two-phase region. This phenom-
interface between the two-phase region and the vapor region.
ena has also been reported numerically using the LTNE–TPMM
Therefore, the assumption that it is isothermal in the two-phase
[23]. Furthermore, the fluid temperature is higher than the solid
region for both the solid and fluid may be unreasonable.
temperature near the interface between the liquid phase region
and the two-phase region. This inverse phenomenon has been pre-
dicted numerically and explained by Shi and Wang [23]. The liquid 3.2. Convective boiling in porous media heated on both sides
evaporates into vapor at the heating surface and then the vapor
reverses and condenses at the boundary between the liquid zone Investigations of boiling heat transfer in porous media were
and two-phase zone, where lots of latent heat releases from the va- conducted [14,15] with a vertical parallelepiped box filled with
por to the solid, therefore the vapor temperature should surpass stacked sphere which was shown in Fig. 5. And the box was heated
the solid temperature according to the second law of thermody- on both sides, when the fluid flowed from bottom to top. The same
namics. The phenomenon can be captured numerically due to the physical model as that shown in Fig. 5 is employed in this paper
LTNE model which is necessary to accurately estimate the heat and it is simplified into a 1-D model along the fluid flowing direc-
and mass transfer behaviors in two-phase region. It is clear that tion Z by considering the side-heated heat flux as internal heat

Hot Gas Flow


Q
Porous Matrix y y
Tg
0.1m

Vapor Region

g Ts Tf
Two Phase Region

Liquid Region

Coolant Flow m Tc Liquid Coolant Reservoir T 0

Fig. 2. Physical model of transpiration cooling with coolant phase change.


6 C. Xin et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 1–7

Table 3
550 1.0 Basic parameters of convective boiling.
Ts
425 Characteristic size 200 lm
500 1.0 Tf
0.8
0.8 S Porosity 0.35
400
0.6 Height 0.2 m
450 Breadth 0.1 m
0.4 0.6
T (K)

375 Thickness 0.02 m


0.2

s
400 Coolant mass flow rate 0.5 kg/(m2 s)
0.0 0.4
350 Heat flux on hot surface hhot(Tf  Ts) = 72,500 W/m2
0.075 0.080 0.085 0.090 0.095 Heat transfer coefficient on cold surface 700 W/(m2 K)
350
0.2
300
0.0
250 400 1.0
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10
X (m)
380 0.8
Fig. 4. Distributions of saturation and temperature in transpiration cooling.
360
Tf 0.6

T (K)
Ts

S
340 S
0.4
Outlet flow (X-axis)
320
0.2
300
0.0
280
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
X (m)
Heat flux Heat flux Fig. 7. Distributions of pressure and saturation in convective boiling heated on both
sides.

Distributions of saturation and pressure in convective boiling


heated on both sides are shown in Fig. 6. It is clear that the pres-
sure profile in the single-phase region is nearly linear, while highly
Fluid flow nonlinear in the two-phase region, where the pressure firstly in-
creases slightly in a short distance and then decreases quickly. A
countercurrent flow is resulted from the increasing of pressure
along the flowing direction. The saturation profile has the same
trend as that in Fig. 3. Namely, the heat flux direction has an
important influence on the heat and mass transfer behaviors in
Fig. 5. Physical model of convective boiling heated on both sides. porous media.
Distributions of temperature and saturation in convective boil-
ing heated on both sides are shown in Fig. 7. It can be seen that
140000
along the flowing direction the temperature profile appears an N-
1.0 shaped curve, as has been reported in Refs. [14,15]. Furthermore,
135000 P
S the temperature in the single-phase increases, while the tempera-
130000
0.8 ture in the two-phase region seems slightly increases firstly in a
125000 short distance and then decreases (nearly 6.5 K). When the fluid
0.6
is heated on the sides, heat is added on the fluid gradually along
120000
P (Pa)

the flowing direction and so two-phase region is long, which will


S

115000 result in an obvious pressure drop and a corresponding drop of sat-


0.4
uration temperature in the two-phase region. Therefore, it is neces-
110000 sary to consider the nonisothermal phenomenon in the two-phase
105000
0.2 region for an accurate prediction of the performance of heat and
mass transfer. And it is clear that the difference of temperature be-
100000 tween the solid and fluid is less than 1 K in the whole domain ex-
0.0
95000
cept near the interface between the two-phase region and the
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 vapor region. This phenomenon can be captured numerically by
X (m) the LTNE model, which will make the simulation more accurate.

Fig. 6. Distributions of saturation and temperature in convective boiling heated on


both sides. 4. Conclusions

In order to numerically investigate the heat and mass transfer


course from the porous media. The distributions of pressure and behaviors in porous media, this paper developed a new model
saturation are shown in Fig. 6 with the corresponding parameters which is based on the SFM and considered the LTNE. Due to the
ranged in Table 3. modification in thermal transport to the SFM, the new model has
C. Xin et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 1–7 7

been called a modified separate flow model (MSFM). In the MSFM, porous medium with Soret and Dufour effects. Energy Convers Manage
2012;62:102–8.
the effects of capillarity, liquid phase change, nonisothermal two-
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