Thermodynamic analysis of entropy generation in a horizontal pipe filled with high porosity metal foams

Abstract

In the field of thermal management of electronic equipment, examining entropy generation properties is extremely useful. The entropy production experiments have been expanded to porous media using high porosity metal foams. The entropy production/generation for forced convection heat transfer in a tube is quantified via a numerical research. In the field of air stream direction, the horizontal pipe is entirely filled with nickel metal foam of 0.6 m length. For the isotropic porous metal foam zone, the Darcy-extended Forchheimer (DEF) flow is used to capture the dynamics of flow and local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) model is used for analyzing the heat transport phenomenon, while the k-e turbulent model is used for the non-foam porous region of the tube. The effect of fully filled nickel metallic foam with different pore densities of 10, 20, and 30 metal foam with a porosity of 0.85 is being investigated. The computational solutions presented here are supported by experimental results published in the literature. The outlet exergy of the system rises with higher flow rates and falls with higher metal foam pore densities. The results of entropy generation due to thermal and fluid friction and Bejan number conceptions are also shown and discussed. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd.