Modeling Liquid Spray Evaporation in Heated Porous Media With a Local Thermal Non-Equilibrium Model

Abstract

The situations such as rapid evaporation, and significant heat generation/convective heat transfer, typically encountered in liquid-fueled porous media combustors, warrant the use of local thermal non-equilibrium models. Knowledge of fuel vaporization and mixing is important to understand the combustion characteristics. In this paper, a two-energy equation model is presented to account for the non-equilibrium between the solid and liquid phases. In this approach, two energy equations for solid and gas phases were solved. Kerosene fuel, issued from an air-blast atomizer, was injected on to a heated porous medium. Governing equations were applied on a 2-D axisymmetric, computational domain of 20.3 cm × 2.5 cm. Computer simulations were conducted using a commercial code Fluent 6.0. Heat transfer from combustion porous medium was simulated by setting a volumetric heat source in the porous region. Accordingly, the peak temperatures in porous media varied from 473 K to 590 K. Axial temperature profiles within the porous media were obtained with equilibrium and non-equilibrium models. Results indicated that the equilibrium models slightly underpredicted the peak temperature. Using non-equilibrium models, radial profiles of kerosene vapor concentration were obtained at different axial locations and the results showed that the thermal effects of the porous medium dominated in the evaporation process. Numerical results were also compared with available data and the agreement was found to be good.