Heat transfer performance assessment for forced convection in a tube partially filled with a porous medium

Heat transfer performance assessment was made for forced convection in a heated tube with a porous medium core and a tube with a wall covered with a porous medium layer, so as to investigate effectiveness of porous material insertion within a tube. Both local thermal and non-thermal equilibrium analyses were carried out for the two cases of partial porous medium filling, to investigate the validity of local thermal equilibrium assumption. It has been found that the local thermal non-equilibrium analysis is essential for the case of forced convection in a tube with a heated wall surface covered with a porous medium layer, whereas the local thermal equilibrium analysis suffices to capture transport phenomena for the case of forced convection in a tube with a porous medium core. In a comparatively low range of pumping power, the heat transfer performance of the tube with a porous medium core is higher than that of the tube with a wall covered with a porous medium layer. However, in a high range of pumping power, the latter performance exceeds the former. (C) 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.