Experimental Investigation of Natural Convection into a Horizontal Annular Tube with Porous Medium Effects

Abstract

In this work, an experimental investigation has been done for heat transfer by natural-convection through a horizontal concentric annulus with porous media effects. The porous structure in gap spacing consists of a glass balls and replaced by plastic (PVC) balls with different sizes. The outer surface of outer tube is isothermally cooled while the outer surface of inner tube is heated with constant heat flux condition. The inner tube is heated with different supplied electrical power levels. Four different radius ratios of annulus are used. The effects of porous media material, particles size and annulus radius ratio on heat dissipation in terms of average Nusselt number have been analyzed. The experimental results show that the average Nusselt number increases with increasing annulus radius ratio and particle diameter for same porous media material. Furthermore, two empirical correlations of average Nusselt number with average Rayleigh number for glass and PVC particles are developed. The present experimental results are compared with previously works and good correspondence is showed.