Efficiency of heat and mass transfer in fully wet porous fins: Exponential fins versus straight fins

• Closed-form analytical solutions are presented.
• Decaying type of exponential fin profiles are subjected to higher fin surface temperature.
• Fin efficiency is enhanced for decaying type of exponential profiles.
• Porosity leads to a better fin efficiency.
• Exponential fin profiles having negative shape parameter are better in industrial applications like refrigeration.

The combined heat and mass transfer mechanisms owing to the temperature and humidity ratio differences and their influence on the efficiency of different exponential type porous fin configurations are analyzed in this paper. The closed-form temperature solutions for an exponential impermeable dry fin as obtained in an earlier publication (Turkyilmazoglu, 2012) are extended here to the case where the surface of the fin is fully wet and porous. A comparison with the traditional straight porous fins proves that the fin tip temperature and efficiency of the exponential porous wet fins are much better than those of corresponding to the straight porous wet fins.