Three Dimensional Simulation of Heat and Mass Transfer During Facing Brick Drying#

Abstract

This work is devoted to presenting a 3-D drying of facing brick from two perspectives: theory and industrial practice. A Three-dimensional unstructured Control Volume Finite Element Method (CVFEM) is developed in order to simulate unsteady coupled heat and mass transfer phenomena that arise during convective drying of unsaturated porous media. In order to simulate 3-D complex geometries, as application here the drying of facing brick, we used the free mesh generator Gmsh. Several simulation results are presented that depict the new possibilities offered by such a tool. In particular, the simulation of a whole facing brick at the industrial scale. This simulation proves that only three spatial dimensions are able to explain the heat and mass transfer during drying process. Indeed, thanks to this 3-D tool and unlike 2-D model we can observe for the first time unexpected thermal field, liquid saturation and pressure distributions for whole facing brick at the industrial scale and hence evaluating the correct drying rate under the real conditions.