ARTICLE:

• Continuum Thermodynamic Modeling of Drying Capillary Particulate Materials via an Improved Edge-based Algorithm  download article

Arnaud G. Malan
Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, Rep. of South Africa

Roland W. Lewis
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

The numerical modeling of the coupled heat and mass transfer processes prevalent in drying non-hygroscopic and hygroscopic capillary porous materials is dealt with. A set of volume averaged governing equations is employed for this purpose. An improved hybrid unstructured vertex-centered edge-based finite volume algorithm is used for spatial discretization purposes. Enhancements include reformulation of boundary integral flux-averaging in conjunction with the use of a compact stencil in the computation of diffusive terms. A significant increase in accuracy is demonstrated. For validation purposes, the drying of a non-hygroscopic and hygroscopic material is modeled. Predicted results are shown to compare well with experimental data.

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199-204 pages

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