Numerical Study of Heat and Mass Transfer during the Evaporative Drying of Porous Media

The paper deals with numerical study of drying process of porous media of sand during the evaporation of a liquid saturated porous layer within parallel vertical channel. The liquid and air streams are modeled as two coupled laminar boundary layers incorporating non-Darcian models of the inertia and boundary effects. The governing equations and the associated boundary conditions are discretized by means of the finite volume method implemented on a staggered mesh and the velocity-pressure coupling is processed by the SIMPLER algorithm. The influences of the inlet mass flow of the drying gas, porous layer thickness and the porosity on the drying process are analyzed. Results show that the drying rate of the porous media is improved by the reduction of the porosity and porous layer thickness a large drying rate is obtained with high inlet mass flow and high inlet gas temperature.