THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF NATURAL-CONVECTION IN A CONFINED POROUS MEDIUM

Natural convection in a porous medium was mathematically modelled by writing force mass and energy balances on a differential element of porous medium. The resultant set of partial differential equations, which accounts for temperature-dependent physical properties, was solved numerically after the introduction of a pseudo-stream function. This method of treating emperature-dependent fluid properties, which is also applicable to other fluid flow problems, resulted in an efficient solution algorithm. Good agreement has been obtained between theoretical and experimental results. Theoretical calculations show that under certain conditions variation of fluid properties with temperature has a significant effect on convective motions. Copyright © 1972 Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering