Annual Reviews of Heat Transfer

ISSN 1049-0787

Year 1994

Volume 5

458 pages

Volume price - $141.00

Massoud Kaviany
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

When gaseous, plain medium bounds a partially saturated porous medium, then interfacial heat and mass transfer can occur across this interface. This interfacial convective heat and mass transfer requires temperature and concentration gradients and fluid motions. Figure 1 depicts this interface A_pa between a porous and a plain (ambient) medium. A discussion of this interfacial transport is given by van Brakel [1]. This interface is not planar and the distribution of the phases on this interface is very complex and depends on the surface saturation (defined for a thin interfacial layer), the solid topology, the wettability, and the history. There is, in general, some motion within the interfacial liquid phase. In addition to this and the motion in the gaseous plain medium, the liquid and the gaseous phase in the bulk of the porous medium experience motion. The porous medium gaseous phase moves due to the concentration and the total gas-phase pressure gradients. The liquid phase in addition to the saturation gradient can undergo motion due to the gradient of the surface tension, buoyancy, wind shear, solid-fluid surface forces, or combinations of these forces. Here, we review the elements and the existing treatments of the interfacial transport across partially saturated surfaces. Since the problem involves the simultaneous heat and mass transfer, a complete treatment is very involved. However, as with other phenomena, we examine some simple systems in detail and evaluate the experimental results for the more complex systems. A summary is given at the end.

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