Study of non-isothermal flow and heat transfer in porous media

The objective is to find an appropriate set of conservation equations describing the nonisothermal flow and heat transfer in porous media. Careful measurements were made to study the applicability of Darcy's law and the volume averaged energy equation in describing heat transfer and nonisothermal flow of an incompressible fluid in consolidated metallic porous media. Experiments were performed on five different foam metal specimens, three made of nickel 200 and two of copper, having a porosity range of 0.55 to 0.80. Cylindrical specimens of 6 in. nominal length and 2 in. nominal diameter were used with distilled water as the saturating fluid. The permeability of each specimen was measured. The effective thermal conductivity of each specimen fully saturated with water was measured using the steady state method of comparison. The detailed temperature distribution in each specimen was measured with a number of thermal boundary conditions and fluid flow. The pressure drop across the specimen was also measured.