Numerical simulation of convective heat and mass transfer in banks of tubes

This paper studies convective heat and mass transfer in laminar flows of humid air through banks of tubes. The flow structure on the airside is spatially periodic, with fully developed conditions prevailing after a short distance from the inlet section. In numerical simulations, periodicities in the velocity, temperature and mass concentration fields are taken into account to reduce the computational domain, both in the entrance region and in the fully developed region. The approach followed is completely general, even if the finite-element method is used in the discretization process. In the application section, velocity, temperature and mass concentration fields are computed for a bank of tubes in a staggered arrangement. Quantitative results are also obtained for apparent friction factors, Nusselt numbers, Sherwood numbers and ratios between Colburn factors for heat and mass transfer. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.