ANALYSES OF FREE CONVECTION FLOW OF AN INCLINED PLATE EMBEDDED IN A DOUBLE LAYER POROUS MEDIUM

Abstract

Porous media offer wide practical applications, such as the use of the porous medium in solar water desalination systems to enhance water evaporation or condensation. Water condensation represents half of the desalination process. This study presents a simulation for the condensation process with double porous layers. This problem is simulated as the natural convection from an inclined plate embedded in a double layer porous medium; the plate was subjected to a constant wall temperature with variable layers thickness, permeability ratio and different plate angles. The effects of these parameters on the temperature distribution and total heat transfer were investigated. It has been found that the heat transfer rate increases with increasing the permeability ratio. Also increasing the layers thickness ratio in low permeability ratios, or keeping the layers ratio as minimum in the high permeability ratios are favorite. The inclination angle affects negatively the rate of heat transfer due to the buoyancy effect.