Momentum boundary layer and its influence on the convective heat transfer in porous media

Abstract

Convective heat transfer in a channel filled with a porous medium has been analyzed in this paper. The flow field is analyzed considering both the inertia and solid boundary effects and the thickness of the momentum boundary layer is found as a function of the Darcy and the Reynolds number. The two-equation model is applied for the heat transfer analysis and theoretical solutions are obtained for both fluid and solid phase temperature fields. The Nusselt number is obtained in terms of the relevant physical parameters, such as the Biot number for the internal heat exchange, the ratio of effective conductivities between the fluid and solid phases, and the thickness of the momentum boundary layer. The results indicate that the influence of the velocity profile is characterized within two regimes according to the two parameters, the Biot number and the conductivity ratio between the phases. The decrease in the heat transfer due to the momentum boundary layer is 15% at most within a practical range of the pertinent parameters. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.