Forced convection in a sintered porous channel with inlet and outlet slots

A detailed numerical investigation of two-dimensional laminar forced convection in a sintered porous channel with inlet and outlet slots is presented. This configuration is developed for a new pumped single-phase porous metal heat exchanger. Hydrodynamic and heat transfer results are generated for a typical unit cell (i.e., slot-fed porous channel) of the configuration that has inlet and outlet slots on one wall and a uniform heating on the other wall. The flow in the porous medium is modeled using the Brinkman-Forchheimer-extended Darcy model in which the inertia and boundary effects are taken into consideration. The effects of thermal dispersion are included in the energy equation. Good agreement is found between the present numerical predictions and the corresponding experimental measurements. Parametric studies are conducted to evaluate the effects of particle diameter, particle Reynolds number, and channel dimensions including height and slot width. Length-averaged Nusselt number and friction factor correlations are developed for efficient design of a porous metal heat exchanger based on the present configuration.