Thermal non-equilibrium heat transfer in a porous cavity in the presence of bio-chemical heat source

Abstract

This paper is concerned with thermal non-equilibrium natural convection in a square cavity filled with a porous medium in the presence of a biomass which is transported in the cavity. The biomass can consume a secondary moving substrate. The physics of the presented problem is related to the analysis of heat and mass transfer in a composting process that controlled by internal heat generation. The intensity of the bio-heat source generated in the cavity is equal to the rate of consumption of the substrate by the biomass. It is assumed that the porous medium is homogeneous and isotropic. A two-field model that represents the fluid and solid phase temperature fields separately is used for energy equation. A simplified Monod model is introduced along with the governing equations to describe the consumption of the substrate by the biomass. In other word, the transient biochemical heat source which is dependent on a solute concentration is considered in the energy equations. Investigation of the biomass activity and bio-chemical heat generation in the case of thermal non-equilibrium assumption has not been considered in the literature and they are open research topics. The effects of thermal non-equilibrium model on heat transfer, flow pattern and biomass transfer are investigated. The effective parameters which have a direct impact on the generated bio-chemical heat source are also presented. The influences of the non-dimensional parameters such as fluid-to-solid conductivity ratio on the temperature distribution are presented.