HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER BY NATURAL CONVECTION DURING WATER EVAPORATION IN A CORRUGATED VERTICAL CHANNEL

This paper deals with a numerical study of coupled heat and mass transfers by natural convection during water evaporation in a corrugated vertical channel. This channel is heated asymmetrically with a uniform heat flux. The unsteady two-dimensional Navier-Stokes, energy, and species equations are integrated by a finite volume approach and then solved using the projections method. The aim of this work is to conduct a detailed numerical study to analyze the effects of physical parameters such as flux density imposed on the wall, the relative humidity, and the effects of geometrical parameters such as the shape, the size, and the number of protuberances. More than four hundred numerical simulations have been carried in order to analyze the effect of added obstructions to a vertical open channel. The numerical results are the distributions o f dimensionless axial velocity, temperature, and concentration; the Nusselt number as well as the Sherwood number are also presented. For some particular cases, results are in agreement with previous works reported in the literature. Moreover, the agreement between numerical results and experimental data is satisfactory.