Natural convection and wall condensation or evaporation in humid air-filled cavities subjected to wall temperature variations

Heat and mass transfer by natural convection coupled to wall surface condensation or evaporation in a two-dimensional cavity subjected to uniform, but time-dependent wall temperatures is investigated numerically. At initial state, the cavity is filled with quiescent humid air at uniform temperature and density. By decreasing the wall temperature, condensation occurs at the four wall surfaces until an equilibrium thermodynamic state is reached. The walls are then heated and evaporation of the liquid water film is considered. Various time variations of the wall temperature were investigated. Since the mass of humid air and average pressure experience large changes during transient regimes, a weakly compressible formulation has been used. The model considers only condensation/evaporation under the thin film approximation. The computations were carried out for temperatures of humid air varying between 300 K and 350 K, and pressure variations around atmospheric pressure. The typical width of the cavities is L = 0.1 m. The results show that very different transient flow structures occur during condensation and evaporation processes. The thickness distributions of the water films condensed at the walls are discussed, and it is shown that the thicknesses reflect the flow structures. The effect of the cavity aspect ratio reveals more complicated results than for convection without phase change at the wall surfaces. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.