Heat and Mass Transfer by Natural Convection during Transpiration trough a Porous Plate

Cooling by evaporation through transpiring porous walls is expanding in various industrial applications such as air conditioning. It is also used to cool water in a clay jug. This process deserves to be studied, understood and valued. This paper deals with the transpiration phenomenon through a saturated porous plate coupled with heat and mass transfer by natural convection. Conservation Equations (mass, momentum, energy and concentration), associated with adequate boundary conditions, have been numerically solved using an implicit finite difference iterative method. The numerical model has been validated by experimental measurements from holographic interferometry. The used method to obtain temperature and concentration profiles was explained. They are evaluated from the refractive index of moisture air in the boundary layer. The main numerical results presented are: Nusselt and Sherwood numbers, temperature, humidity, and velocity profiles within the boundary layer as well as the different heat fluxes exchanged between the plate and the surrounding environment. Besides, the present model allows showing the important effect of the equivalent thermal conductivity and the surface emissivity on temperature and heats flux.