Convective Heat Transfer in Porous Media For Energy Storage (Paperback)

Flow and heat transfer in porous media has received much attention due to its importance in various fields of engineering.The volume-averaged energy equations based on thermal equilibrium and thermal nonequilibrium between the fluid & the solid phases are developed. The finite difference discretization of the model is carried out by using implicit format for the time derivatives, central difference scheme for second order partial-spatial derivatives and the upwind scheme and QUICK approaches for modeling of convective terms. The resulting algebraic equations are solved by Gauss-Seidel iterations using sufficiently fine grid in space and large number of time-steps. A laboratory scale experimental set up is developed to validate the results of numerical simulation and provide vital information about the transport phenomenon in porous medium. The knowledge gained is useful in the design of an energy storage system capable of handling summer air conditioning loads. The problem studied bring out interesting features of convective heat transfer in saturated porous medium and unsaturated soils, which are important from application point of view.