Convective heat and moisture transport in particle enclosure with multiple ports and multiple flows

Simultaneous transport of heat and moisture by natural convection in a partial enclosure with four free ports is investigated numerically. Moist air motions are driven by the temperature and concentration differences resulting from ambient air and internal discrete sources, with different levels of temperature and concentration. The Prandtl number and Schmidt number used are 0.7 and 0.6 respectively. Due to boundary conditions and geometries are symmetric about vertical mid-plane, only half space is taken into consideration by use of symmetrical boundary conditions. The fluid, heat and moisture transports through the cavity are respectively analyzed using the streamlines, heatlines and masslines, and the heat and mass transfer potentials are also explained by the variations of overall Nusselt and Sherwood numbers. The numerical simulations presented here span a wide range of the thermal/solutal levels of external and internal sources in the domain of aiding buoyancy forced flows. Multiple steady flows appear as different initial distributions were imposed. It is shown that the heat transfer potential, moisture transfer potential, and flow patterns can be promoted or inhibited, depending strongly on the thermal/moisture Rayleigh numbers and initial flow states.