Numerical investigation of vapor–liquid heat and mass transfer in porous media

Abstract

A modified separate flow model (MSFM) is developed to numerically investigate the heat and mass transfer behaviors in porous media in this paper. In the MSFM, the effects of capillarity, liquid phase change, 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 transfer source and variable convergence factors are simultaneously employed. Two typical numerical examples with a one-dimension model of porous media are studied that the high heat fluxes are vertical and parallel to the fluid flow direction, respectively. And the results indicated that the influence of heat 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.