Influence of the height-to-diameter ratio on turbulent mixed convection in vertical cylinders

Turbulent mixed-convection mass transfer in vertical cylinders was measured using a sulfuric acid–copper sulfate electroplating technique. The Grashof numbers ranged from 5.3 × 109 to 6.9 × 1010, the Reynolds numbers ranged from 4,000 to 14,000, and the Schmidt numbers were approximately 2,000. The test results under buoyancy-aided and buoyancy-opposed flow conditions successfully reproduced typical turbulent mixed-convection heat-transfer behavior and agreed well with existing studies performed by Ko et al. and Parlatan et al. Previous studies have used the cylinder diameter as the characteristic length for the buoyancy coefficient; however, this study focused on the influence of the cylinder height on the mixed-convection mass-transfer rates because the height determines the buoyancy. The tests performed for various heights with a fixed diameter or for various diameters with a fixed height demonstrated the influence of the height-to-diameter ratio on the mass-transfer rate, revealing that the height of the cylinder should be considered as a length scale. A new empirical correlation was derived for turbulent mixed-convection mass transfer that includes the influence of the height-to-diameter ratios.