Conjugate fluid, heat and species transports inside an enclosure containing miscellaneous solid arrays: General models of electronic cooling and pollutant removals

Abstract Double-diffusive natural convection in a vertical enclosure containing various solid block arrays is numerically and analytically investigated in present work, where heat and species source and sink are simultaneously attached on the walls. Rayleigh number, buoyancy force ratio, number of inner solid blocks, solid thermal conductivity and mass diffusion coefficient have been varied to observe inherent flow structures and mechanism of thermal and mass transports, regarding of different levels of solid-to-fluid volume ratios. Correlations have been presented for different flow regimes, namely thermal buoyancy driven flow and solutal buoyancy driven flow. Simulation and correlation results demonstrate that influences of thermal conductivity and mass diffusion coefficient of the solid block arrays on average Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are not evident compared with that of Rayleigh number. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between average Nusselt number and Sherwood number. In addition, under certain values of Rayleigh number, absolute values of buoyancy force ratio close to unity will cause multiple steady solutions in pure natural convection. This research could benefit the future thermal and species management for electronics and built environment.