Numerical Study of Heat and Mass Transfer by Laminar and Turbulent Natural Convection With Cross Diffusion Effects in Square Cavity

Abstract

Laminar and turbulent natural convection flow in a two-dimensional square cavity filled two component system with compensating horizontal thermal and solute concentration gradients is investigated in this paper. The temperature gradient and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) concentration gradient are kept uniform in horizontal direction, while horizontal surfaces are kept adiabatic and impermeable within a square cavity. According to the principle of irreversible thermodynamics, with thermal-diffusion (Soret) effect and diffusion-thermo (Dufour) effect, a commercial computational fluid dynamics (Fluent) code is used to simulate heat and mass transfer numerically in present work. After validation of the method with available measurements, the range of the cross diffusion coefficients are analyzed firstly. Furthermore, the thermal field and solute concentration fields are presented for various conditions. Finally, the average Nusselt number and Sherwood number at the vertical wall are presented graphically. The numerical results show that the present work would help to know about the convective diffusion and distribution of VOCs indoor environment accurately. Also, it gives the more accurate characteristics of heat and mass transfer in multi-component system with cross diffusion effects.