Proceedings of the ASME 2016 Power Conference

POWER2016
June 26-30, 2016, Charlotte, North Carolina

POWER2016-59259

NUMERICAL MODELING OF LIQUID-TO-VAPOR PHASE CHANGE IN POROUS

MEDIUM UNDER SOLAR HEAT LOCALIZATION

Hamidreza Ghasemi Bahraseman, Ehsan Mohseni Languri1

Department of Mechanical
Engineering,
Tennessee Tech University
Cookeville,
TN, USA

ABSTRACT solving the governing equations. The mass transfer along with
the fluid flow and heat transfer then solved. The simulations
Evaporation process is a crucial part of many fundamental were done under different conditions including the hour
industrials and medicals process. This paper numerically model distribution of irradiation in an average summer day and winter
a novel method of steam generation and enhanced evaporation day to estimate steam generation rate. Produced vapor were from
using solar thermal energy. In this model, a capillary-raised fluid 13.96 kg/m2 to 18.95 kg/m2 in typical summer and winter days,
flows through a porous medium under localized heating respectively. The results show a temperature changes between
condition, and the phase change from liquid to vapor at the 26.9°C and 54.4 °C. Development of the 3D numerical model
liquid-vapor interface occurs. The hydrophilic porous material and its implementation in existing data facilitates better
facilitates the capillary forces for better transportation of the bulk understanding of the transport phenomena through the porous
water through the porous media to the surface of porous media media.
where the absorbed solar energy deliver to the amount of water
inside the pores. The high capillary force due to the micro size INTRODUCTION
inter connected pores inside the medium will rise the fluid from
the cold bulk reservoir and the highly concentrated solar Despite progress in harvesting available renewable energy
radiation focused inside the medium will evaporates the liquid sources for industrial applications, the solar energy harvesting
very effectively. Based on this approach, the absorbed solar and utilization require significant improvement in terms of
energy is delivered into the specific small pores of porous media technical, durability, controls and cost [1]. Solar radiation can be
that initiate the localized evaporation process. The steam utilized to generated steam or vapor for many residential and
generated from this economical technique could be used greatly industrial applications including power generation, desalination,
for thermal solar desalinations process, sterilization process, etc. sterilization, and water purification [2-4]. The traditional
A CAD model of such porous media was developed using methods to generate steam from solar energy include the use of
SolidWorks package. The mesh will be generated on the CAD a solar absorber that gains the thermal energy from the sun
file and the model was imported into the ANSYS Fluent for radiation and a secondary loop of a fluid transfer this heat into a

1
Corresponding Author: Ehsan Languri, ELanguri@tntech.edu, (931) 372-6790.

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 bulk cold fluid for heating and steam generation [5]. The optical carbon-foam to localize heat at the interface of graphite and
losses defined as the ratio of solar gain to its outcome that is carbon foam approximately. Computational methods have the
generated steam in this case [5]. The high optical losses (the potential to predict the vaporization through porous media due
losses of solar radiation) and high cost associated to the to heat flux like solar thermal energy, provided the correct
traditional methods of steam generation hinder their application boundary conditions were applied. Many physical influences
in industry as a dependable source of steam generation [5]. must be concerned such as fluid flow, heat transfer, and transport
Several other existing technologies for vapor generation are of participating liquids as well as gases. However, concentrating
nuclear and fossil fuel steam generation for power generation [6], the solar energy at the interface of evaporation at modified
thermal collector systems for low temperature steam generation porous media and solar flux, to avoid heating the entire bulk fluid
[7] and parabolic troughs for direct steam generation [8]. All of would reduce the disadvantages including heat loss [5].
the above-mentioned techniques and technologies require large Moreover, concerning the fact that experimental methods are
scale with low efficiency and high cost that makes them difficult, expensive, and may have risks however computational
unattractive and unreliable to many industries [9, 10]. methods have the potential to determine this idea diminishing the
To overcome the shortcomings associated to the traditional need to start with experimental procedures.
methods of solar steam generation and evaporation, few The goal of this study is to perform a three-dimensional
researchers in recent years have been studying the use of numerical study on solar heat localization utilizing the
nanomaterials and porous medium with customized thermal and nanoporous medium at the interface of water and air for steam
physical properties in steam generation. In recent years, generation and enhanced evaporation. The geometry of the
Neumann et al. [11-12] prospered to generate steam in bulk of computational domain and material properties were taken from
water with applying Au nanomaterials. Nonetheless, the Ref. [5]. The numerical testing has been done under various solar
efficiency of solar-thermal conversion of this approach was radiation concentrations as well as boundary conditions. For
around 24%. The application of these methods in standalone more practical applications and conclusion, an hourly irradiation
compact solar systems was limited by the high optical in a typical summer day and winter day was imposed to model’s
concentrations. Additionally, high optical concentrations boundary conditions to estimate steam generation rate for such
increase complication and price to the solar-thermal conversion applications. The rate of evaporation from the model is
setup [11, 12]. Radiation of laser beam to nanomaterials Light- compared with the measured experimental values. The micro-
to-heat conversion by conductive nanoparticles, as newly recent structure of fluid flow and heat and mass transfer studied in
technique, under laser illumination, has been shown to induce detailed and results are discussed.
dramatic localized heating and even vaporization of their host
medium [13-15]. METHODOLOGY
Govorov and Richardson [13] investigated the role of
nanomaterials in heat generation. In their experiment, they The computational domain composed of a two-layer porous
converted the absorbed light into heat through non-radiative medium floating at the interface of water and air, Figure 1, as
electron relaxation dynamics, identified as photo thermal tested in the Ghasemi et al. [5] study. The top layer of the porous
influence, and consider as nanometric local heat sources. medium is expanded graphite, and the bottom layer of the
Lukianova-Hleb et al. [14] studied the transient vapor medium is carbon foam. The capillary force pumps the water
nanobubbles generation using plasmonic nanobubbles. They upward through the carbon foam’s interconnected pores. The
concluded that the vapor-water environment and interacting lateral sides of geometry are considered insulated surfaces.
plasmonic nanoparticle represent a complex nano-system which Chamber diameter (D), graphite layer height (L1), carbon foam
compounds plasmonic characteristics of the nanomaterials with layer thickness (L2), and bulk water height (L3) are 50 mm, 5 mm,
hydrodynamic and optical properties of vapor nanobubble. Wang 12 mm and 66 mm, respectively.
et al. [15] synthesized the assembled film of gold nanoparticles
for enhancing the rate of evaporation. The free-floating The modeling of vaporization of water inside the multi-layer
nanoparticles of gold on the water directly transferred the porous medium under solar heat localization was based on the
thermal energy to the portion of water localized at the top surface discretization of the continuity, momentum, and modified energy
while the bulk liquid temperature was relatively undisturbed equations. The vapor and liquid phases were modeled using the
[15]. Ghasemi et al. [5] tested a porous medium floated at the Lee model [17] to study the vapor transport and can be written
water-air interface for heat localization and steam generation. as shown in Eqs. (1) and (2):
They fabricated and tested a membrane composed of expanded
𝜕
graphite and carbon foal layers to localize the heat at the ⃗𝑣 ) = 𝑚̇𝑙𝑣
(𝛼𝑣 𝜌𝑣 ) + ∇. (𝛼𝑣 𝜌𝑣 𝑉 (1)
𝜕𝑡
interface where vapor generated leave the surface. They reported
the highly rated dynamics of steam generation by the double ⃗𝑣 , and 𝑚̇𝑙𝑣 are vapor phase, vapor volume
where 𝑣, 𝛼𝑣 , 𝜌𝑣 , 𝑉
layers of expanded graphite (on the top) and carbon foam (at the fraction, vapor density, vapor phase velocity, and the rate of mass
bottom) stemmed from solar heat concentrated at the vapor- transfer due to evaporation, respectively. The mass transfer rate
liquid interface. Bahraseman and Languri [16] numerically unite due to evaporation is in the form of 𝑘𝑔⁄𝑠 ∙ 𝑚3 . For
explored the use of porous membrane tested in Ref. [5] under evaporation, when 𝑇𝑙 > 𝑇𝑠𝑎𝑡 , the mass transfer term can be
various conditions using a two-dimensional model. They defined as following:
performed the effect of thermal conductivity of graphite and

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 Table 2. The daytime direct solar radiation for Cookeville, TN
(Latitude and Longitude of 36.16° and 85.50°)

Direct Normal Solar Irradiation, 𝑊 ⁄𝑚2

Time
August 1 February 1
5:00 AM 608.4 0
6:00 AM 993.3 0
7:00 AM 1157.0 702.2
8:00 AM 1236.4 1062.6
9:00 AM 1279.6 1207.8
10:00 AM 1303.6 1274.9
11:00 AM 1315.5 1305.8
12:00 PM 1318.1 1314.2
1:00 PM 1312.0 1303.1
2:00 PM 1295.9 1268.3
3:00 PM 1265.5 1193.9
4:00 PM 1211.0 1030.7
5:00 PM 1107.3 629.8
6:00 PM 877.5 0

Figure 1: Geometry and principle of the model. Using face meshing and inflation techniques, the created
geometry was meshed with 96223 nodes and 86064 elements,
(𝑇𝑙 −𝑇𝑠𝑎𝑡 )
𝑚̇𝑙𝑣 = Φ ∙ 𝛼𝑙 𝜌𝑙 (2) Figure 2.
𝑇𝑠𝑎𝑡

where Φ is a relaxation time coefficient, and 𝛼 and 𝜌 are the

phase volume fraction and density, respectively.
The thermodynamic properties of water, vapor, expanded
graphite, and carbon foam used in the model are tabulated in the
Table 1.

Table 1: Material properties

In this study, a solar ray-tracing method provided by FLUENT

was applied to the model as a boundary condition to compute the
radiation influences of the sun’s rays heating the setup. Solar Figure 2: Generated mesh
radiation is simulated using the sun’s position vector and
illumination variables. Table 2 shows the hour distribution of RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
irradiation in an average summer day (Aug 1 th) and winter day
(Feb 1th) at Cookeville, TN to estimate steam generation rate. Figure 3 shows the evaporation rate gained from the current
simulation in this paper and compared to the experimental results
reported by Ghasemi et al. [5] under identical boundary
conditions and material properties. Results show a high

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 correlation between the modelling and the experimental data. (𝑻𝒊 − 𝑻𝒎𝒊𝒏 )⁄(𝑻𝒎𝒂𝒙 − 𝑻𝒎𝒊𝒏 ) relation where i refers to the time
The slope of the plot in Figure 3 shows that, in a steady-state step.
condition, about 1.1 kg of water can be evaporated per 1 m2 area The low slopes of 0.0039 (S^-1) and 0.0029 (S^-1) were
per hour. numerically observed for top surfaces of graphite and carbon
foam respectively.

Figure 3: Evaporated mass changes over time.

Figure 5: Temperature changes of center points of top surfaces
Figure 4 shows the temperature distribution of the computational
at graphite, carbon foam and water
domain under solar irradiation of 1 kW/m2. The temperature
Results show that underlying water temperature is very close to
difference exists between the porous foam and the bulk water is
its initial temperature despite the heat localizations within the top
an evident of performing carbon foam as an insulator for this test.
layer porous medium for a long time which. This is an indicator
High thermal conductivity of graphite leading to transfer the
of high performance of such system since thermal energy is lost
solar heat to the middle section of porous medium where heat up
at its minimum amount for heating the bulk water while it is
the absorb water and evaporates them, while the lower layer
primarily used in vaporization inside the medium.
carbon foam prevent the transport of the heat to the lower
As shown in Figure 6, volume fraction of the generated vapor
section, water. Thus this leads to improved solar thermal
changes primarily inside the porous medium from a minimum 0
efficiency at low optical concentrations in open air while
to a maximum of 0.0124. The gradient of vapor volume fraction
generating steam.
between the expanded graphite and carbon foam layers is
significantly larger than the one between the bulk water and
carbon foam layers. This trend can be explained due to the fact
that heat localization occurs inside the two-layer porous medium,
hence encourage the major portion of the vaporization.

Figure 4: Temprature distribution

Figure 5 shows normalized temperature variations of top

surfaces of expanded graphite and carbon foam layers. The
maximum and minimum temperature values we recorded and the
normalization was done according to Figure 6: The distribution of volume fraction of vapor

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