FLUID FLOW AND TRANSPORT PHENOMENA

Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering, 19(6) 944—954 (2011)

Laminar Forced Convection Heat and Mass Transfer of Humid Air

across a Vertical Plate with Condensation*

LI Cheng (李成) and LI Junming (李俊明)**

Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Thermal En-
gineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Abstract Condensation of humid air along a vertical plate was numerically investigated, with the mathematical
model built on the full boundary layer equations and the film-wise condensation assumption. The velocity, heat and
mass transfer characteristics at the gas-liquid interface were numerical analyzed and the results indicated that it was
not reasonable to neglect the condensate film from the point of its thickness only. The condensate film thickness,
interface temperature drop and the interface tangential velocity affect the physical fields weakly. However, the sub-
cooling and the interface normal velocity were important factors to be considered before the simplification was
made. For higher wall temperature, the advective mass transfer contributed much to the total mass transfer. There-
fore, the boundary conditions were the key to judge the rationality of neglecting the condensate film for numerical
solutions. The numerical results were checked by comparing with experiments and correlations.
Keywords condensation, binary mixture, convective heat and mass transfer

1 INTRODUCTION pear to hold in an early experimental analysis. Oppo-

When humid air encounters a cold surface, heat
and mass transfer can occur simultaneously if the cold
wall temperature is below the dew point [1]. Humid air
condensation [2-4] is a common phenomenon in many
industrial processes used to speed up the heat removal
or dehumidification [5, 6], such as containment safety
system for nuclear power plants, air-conditioning ap-
plications, cooling towers and heat recovery of com-
busting exhaust. Regardless of condensation being
desired or to be avoided, all natural air used in indus-
trial fields includes water vapor.
Condensation of vapor mixed with a non-
condensable gas has been extensively studied since
the boundary layer approximations were derived by
Sparrow et al [7]. There have been many numerical
analyses that describe condensation processes in forms
of velocity, temperature and concentration profiles.
However, robust models are difficult to develop and
predictions often do not match experiments. Then, the
Reynolds analogy is often paid attention to due to its
simplicity when the Lewis number (Le) is close to
unity. Extensive numerical results have showed that
the Reynolds analogy is valid if the vapor fraction is
small enough, but the assumption of Le = 1 is not rea-
sonable for high vapor fractions.
However, the numerical results of Volchkov et al.
[8] indicated that even for low vapor mass fractions of
less than 0.01, the convection heat transfer fractions in
numerical simulation and experiment differ by three-
fold. They did not give a specific explanation from
physical mechanism or phenomena observation, but
assumed that the differences were due to the wavy
condensate films. Brdlik et al. [9] showed that even for
natural convection the Reynolds analogy did not ap-
site to their conclusions, the numerical study of the
heat and mass transfer by Desrayand and Lauriat [10]
indicated that the Sherwood number and Nusselt
number were similar. Their formulation of the heat
and mass transfer analogy held well for both low and
high mass condensation rates. Thus, more studies are
needed to understand the effects of velocity, tempera-
ture and concentrations to elucidate these discrepancies.
Many studies neglected the effects of the liquid
film on the humid air phase temperature and concentra-
tion distributions [2, 8, 10] for forced convection, natu-
ral convection or thin film evaporation in their simpli-
fied models. If the interface conditions are neglected,
the numerical analysis will be much simpler and some
commercial software [11] such as CFX can get solu-
tion easily. Then, the total heat rate can be obtained
from the relationship of the heat and mass transporta-
tion analogy. But if the liquid film is not neglected, the
phase interface can not be confirmed clearly and these
software can not achieve the correct prediction. Yan
[12] analyzed the effect of the liquid film thickness and
concluded that it could be neglected when the liquid
mass flow was small. Volchkov et al. [8] pointed out
that the condensate film on the cold wall was thin and
the thermal resistance was small, so the interface tem-
perature was almost the same as the cold wall tem-
perature, and the condensation could be modeled by
setting a velocity component normal to the interface.
Ren and Gu [2] on the other hand, simply modeled the
vapor condensation as a chemical reaction and the
effects of condensate film on the velocity, temperature
and concentration boundary layers were totally neglected.
Thus, more studies are needed to evaluate the effects
of the condensate film on the heat and mass transfer.
The present work starts from the full laminar

Received 2010-09-17, accepted 2011-06-16.

* Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2011CB706904) and Beijing Natural Science Foundation (3071001).
** To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lijm@tsinghua.edu.cn
 Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 19, No. 6, December 2011 945

boundary layer with the actual phase change interface gas region assumed to be constant .
conditions, analyzes the condensate film, interface Energy conservation in the liquid film:
velocity and characteristics of heat and mass transfer ∂ ( c p ,l Tl ) ∂ ( c p ,l Tl )
to better understand the condensation of humid air ∂ ⎛ ∂Tl ⎞
ρl ul + ρl vl (3) = kl
flowing over a vertical plate, and provides a theoreti- ∂x ∂y ∂y ⎜⎝ ∂y ⎟⎠
cal and quantitative basis for evaluating the simplified
analyses previously referred. The thermal physical The thermal physical properties in Eqs. (1)-(3)
properties changing with temperature and concentra- are assumed to be constant, calculated using the ref-
tion are included in the momentum, energy and con- erence temperature Tref,l as recommended by Poots
centration equations. Experimental observation is also and Miles [13]:
made to analyze the discrepancy between the experi- 1
ments and the numerical solutions of the heat and Tref ,l = Tw + (Tm,i − Tw ) (4)
3
mass transfer analogy.
Stephan [14] has shown that the temperature dif-
ference could reach 19.78 °C, so the transport proper-
2 MODELS AND ANALYSES ties can change much. Thus, the correct Tref,l leads to
better results, especially for high condensation rates.
A 2-dimensional (2-D) model was adopted, based
on the characteristics of the film-wise condensation, 2.2 Humid air boundary layer model
the parallel flow and gravity direction. The schematic
of the 2-D model with the coordinate system is shown
in Fig. 1. The computational domain, of 0.1 m in x Mass conservation in the gas-vapor region:
direction and around 0.05 m in y direction, is split into ∂ρ m um ∂ρ m vm
the liquid film region and the humid air region with + =0 (5)
each region analyzed separately. The domain size is ∂x ∂y
chosen so wide that the external flow of gas mixture is Momentum conservation in the humid air region:
not influenced by the domain width. The interface
∂ ∂
boundary conditions between the two regions are used ( ρm um um ) + ( ρm um vm )
to relate the two solutions during iterative calculation. ∂x ∂y
∂ ⎛ ∂u ⎞
⎜=μm m ⎟ + g ( ρ m − ρ m,∞ ) (6)
∂y ⎝ ∂y ⎠
where term g ( ρ − ρ∞ ) represents the effects of
buoyancy, due to the density difference caused by
temperature and concentration gradients between the
bulk flow and the humid air boundary layer. Liao et al.
[15] concluded that buoyancy effects must be included,
as they numerically showed that the bulk flow blew
away some non-condensable gas previously accumu-
lated near the interface, which enhanced the conden-
sation heat transfer with the heat transfer coefficient
increased by up to 45%. Thus, buoyancy effects must
Figure 1 Condensation of humid air flowing along a ver- be included.
tical cold wall Energy conservation in the humid air region:
∂ ∂
2.1 Liquid film model ρ m um
∂x
( c p ,mTm ) + ρ m vm ( c p ,mTm )
∂y
Mass conservation in the liquid film: ∂ ⎛ ∂Tm ⎞ ∂ ⎡ ∂W ⎤
= km + ρ m D ( c p ,g − c p ,v ) m Tm ⎥
∂ul ∂vl ∂y ⎜⎝ ∂y ⎟⎠ ∂y ⎢⎣ ∂y ⎦
+ =0 (1) (7)
∂x ∂y
where the last term indicates the effect of mass diffu-
Momentum conservation in the liquid film: sion on heat transfer. The effects of the thermal diffu-
∂ ( ul ul ) ∂ ( ul vl ) ∂ ⎛ ∂ul ⎞ ∂p sion on the energy transport are negligible.
ρl + ρl = μ ⎟ + g ⋅ ρl − ∂x (2) Species conservation in the humid air region:
∂x ∂y ∂y ⎜⎝ ∂y ⎠
∂Wv ∂Wv ∂ ⎛ ∂Wv ⎞
ρ m um + ρ m vm = ⎜ ρ m Dm (8)
The term (−∂p / ∂x) in Eq. (2) is approximately ∂x ∂y ∂y ⎝ ∂y ⎟⎠
replaced by ρi g , which is calculated from the mo-
mentum conservation solution for the humid air phase Thermal physical properties of gas-vapor mixture
at the interface, with the total pressure in the whole are a function of the concentration as well as temperature,
946 Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 19, No. 6, December 2011

so they are quite different from those for a pure gas.
Thus, the thermal physical properties of the gas-vapor
mixture are all taken to be variable.
2.3 Boundary conditions
At the wall surface y = 0 :
ul = vl = 0 and Tl = Tw
At the free humid air stream or the inlet: y → ∞
or x = 0
um = u∞ , vm = 0 and Tm = T∞
At the phase interface, no slip is assumed with
the shear stress for a Newtonian fluid:
ul ,i = um,i
∂ul ,i ∂um,i
μl = μm
∂y ∂y
Equations. (11) and (12) indicate that the tangen-
tial velocity component up is a function of the velocity
gradients in both the humid air and the liquid. up
makes the condensation air-vapor field boundary layer
different from dry conditions. Therefore, neglecting
condensate film [2, 8, 10] means that up is not included.
Temperature jumps at the interface [16], as the
partial vapor pressure at the interface is higher than its
saturated pressure at temperature, Tm,i. Therefore, the
interfacial thermal resistance exists from Eq. (13).
κ 1
m= ⎡ pv − psat (Tl ,i ) ⎦⎤ (13)
1 − 0.5κ 2πRTl ,i ⎣
where, the saturated water vapor pressure, psat, is re-
lated to the interfacial temperature [17]:
⎛ 5965.6 ⎞
psat (T ) = pt ⋅ exp ⎜18.79 − 0.0075T − ⎟ (14)
⎝ T ⎠
At the humid air-liquid interface, both the ther-
mal balance and the mass balance require:
They concluded that the mass transfer error, if the ad-
vection is neglected, would result in large errors for
high condensation mass rate. Hammou et al. [18]
found that vm,i was the key factor to determine
whether it was condensation or evaporation. As noted
earlier, Ren and Gu [2] entirely neglected the effect of
the condensate film on the heat and mass transfer.
Thus, different from the considerations in former
(9) studies, the interfacial velocity component, vm,i, here is
considered as shown in Eq. (18).
The condensation rate should abide by both the
Fick’s law and the advective mass transfer at the in-
(10) terface, in addition to the mass balance:
(19)
(11)
2.4 Thermal properties for the humid air
(12)
The specific heat at constant pressure is a func-
tion of components and their mass fractions:
c p ,m = Wv c p ,v + Wa c p ,a (20)
where Wv can be obtained from the water vapor partial
pressure and Wa equals ( 1 − Wv ). The total pressure, pt,
here is 1.01325×105 Pa.
The density of the gas-vapor based on tempera-
ture and concentration is given by
⎛ 1 c⎞
ρ m = pt ⎜ 0.003484 − 0.00134 ⎟ (21)
⎝ T T⎠
The thermal conductivity and viscosity of the
humid air are also functions of mass fractions:
km = (1 − W )ka + WK v (22)
μm = (1 − W ) μa + W μ v (23)
2.5 Solution method

(15) The analyses were made, based on the geometry

in Fig. 1. The coordinate transform in terms of
dδ dδ x = L χ and y = δ ( x)η (24)
m = ρl ul − ρl vl = ρ m um − ρ m vm (16)
dx dx
was used to manually transform all the conservation
where hf,g for water is the function of temperature. It is equations and boundary conditions onto the new co-
quadratic fitted as ordinate system. In the original x-y coordinate system,
hf ,g = 2.7554 × 106 − 2.464Tl 2,i (17) the transverse dimension of condensate film was a
variable in the x direction. While, the dimensionless
The velocity component normal to the interface, condensate film thickness in the new coordinate sys-
vm,i due to the advective condensation from air-vapor tem χ-η was always the same along the air flow direc-
mixture to liquid is deduced by Comini and Savino [1] tion and it was convenient to capture the dimen-
as sionless interface position accurately. These conversa-
tion equations in the original coordinate and in the
D ∂W new boundary-fitted coordinate systems should satisfy
vm,i = − (18)
1 − Wv,i ∂n the following conversion relations, simplified by using
i
Eq. (24) [19]:
 Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 19, No. 6, December 2011 947

∂ ∂χ ∂ ∂η ∂ 1 ∂ η dδ ∂ from the grids next to the leading edge in χ direction.

= ⋅ + ⋅ = ⋅ − ⋅ ⋅ (25) Since condensation only occurs at the interface, it
∂x ∂x ∂χ ∂x ∂η L ∂χ δ ⋅ L dχ ∂η
was obviously important to capture the phase interface,
∂ ∂η ∂ ∂χ ∂ 1 ∂ where the interface physical conditions must be enforced
= + = ⋅ (26) with good accuracy. The finite difference method was
∂y ∂y ∂η ∂y ∂χ δ ∂η
used here, considering the clear phase interface existing
To realize the meshes within the humid air domain as between the two numerical regions. The Tri-diagonal
well as in the condensate film domain, the width of Matrix Algorithm method for matrix solutions and the
the whole numerical domain H, was set to be the unsteady state solution method for the control equations
function of condensate film thickness or χ were used for robust convergence. The Alternative
δ Direction Implicit method was applied to solve the
H = ⎡⎣0.05 − δ χ =1 ⎤⎦ +δ (27) matrix equations simultaneously. The computer code
δ χ =1 was developed in our lab and compiled in Fortran.
The solution was first to assume an initial film
where H means the meshes along y direction. δ is the thickness and then to solve the momentum equations
local condensate film thickness. and continuity equations, then updated interfacial flow
The control equations in the new coordinate sys- conditions. An iterative solution was needed to correct
tem were then obtained by putting Eqs. (25) and (26) the shear stress and no-slip conditions at the interface.
into the original control equations, Eqs. (1)-(3), (5)-(8). Then, the energy equations and the species equation
For example, Eqs. (1)-(3) are transformed to were solved. The last step was to update all the inter-
1 ∂u η dδ ∂u 1 ∂v facial conditions, the thermal physical properties and
⋅ − ⋅ ⋅ + ⋅ =0 (28) to calculate the local condensate film thickness δ. The
L ∂χ δ ⋅ L dχ ∂η δ ∂η
condensation mass rate m can be obtained by Eqs. (16)
ρl ∂ ( ul ul ) ρlη dδ ∂ ( ul ul ) and (19). Meanwhile, δ could be calculated, based on
⋅ − ⋅ ⋅ + the local mass conservation at interface in the original
L ∂χ δ ⋅ L dχ ∂η x-y coordinate:
ρl ∂ ( ul vl ) μl ∂ 2 ul
δ
⋅
∂η
− 2 ⋅ 2 − g ( ρ l − ρi ) = 0
δ ∂η
(29) m( x ) =
d
dx (∫ δ ( x)
0
ρl ul dy )
ρl ul ∂ ( c p ,l Tl ) ρl ulη dδ ∂ ( c p ,l Tl ) ∑ Δδ j ⎡⎣( ρl ul ) x +Δx − ( ρl ul ) x ⎤⎦
⋅ − ⋅ ⋅ + =
j
(36)
L ∂χ δ ⋅ L dχ ∂η Δx x
ρl vl ∂ ( c p ,l T ) kl ∂ 2Tl The iterative procedure continued for all field vari-
⋅ − 2 ⋅ 2 =0 (30) ables until the maximum relative error of the interface
δ ∂η δ ∂η
temperature reached 10−9.
The structured meshes were obtained in the new coor- Mesh independence was carried out to make sure
dinate system χ-η, with the corresponding boundary that the simulation results were independent of nu-
conditions. merical grids, see Fig. 2. For both the humid air and
At the wall surface η = 0 : the condensate regions, the suitable meshes were the
ul = vl = 0 and Tl = Tw (31) 100×40 structured grids respectively for χ and η direc-
tions for all subsequent simulations.
At the free humid air stream η = H or at the
inlet χ = 0 :
um = u∞ vm = 0 and Tm = T∞ (32)
At the phase interface η = 1 :
ul ,i = um,i (33)

∂ul ,i ∂um,i
ul = μm (34)
∂η ∂η

(35)
Figure 2 Effect of meshes on the calculated local condensa-
tion rate (Tw = 280 K, Tin−Tw = 20 K, uin = 2.0 m·s−1, x = 0.05 m)
Therefore, the structured grids were achieved within
the two numerical domains in new coordinate system.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
At the leading edge of the vertical wall χ = 0 , water
vapor condensation occurred strongly but condensate
film was set to be zero and numerical solution began When the iterative procedure described in Section
948 Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 19, No. 6, December 2011
2.5 is converged, the physical fields of velocity, tem-
perature and concentration can be obtained. Here, the
influencing factors of the condensate film will be dis-
cussed based on the numerical solutions.
3.1 Physical fields within condensate
Characteristics of the local condensate film
thickness, the temperature and velocity component, u,
distributions within the condensate film along x direc-
tion with different Win are shown in Figs. 3 and 4.
Figure 3 Local condensate thickness for different Win
(uin = 2.0 m·s−1, Tin = 300 K, Tw = 280 K)
Win: 0.010; 0.013; 0.016; 0.020
It is seen from Fig. 4 that differences of tem-
perature T and velocity component u within the con-
densate film are very small. Illustrations in Fig. 4 (a)
indicate that except the inlet domain, T increases al-
most linearly in y direction, which means that the heat
conduction is the dominant heat transfer model within
condensate film. In essence, although u in Fig. 4 (b)
displays a non-linear increase in y direction, its abso-
lute value is very small and these data are all within
the same magnitude. Thus, it is reasonable to recog-
nize the constant u gradient in y direction from the
characteristics of their distributions.
The humid air field with condensation shown
above was thought to be similar to that of dry air, but
they are essentially different from each other as the
(a) Temperature distribution
Figure 4 Characteristics of physical fields within the condensate film (uin = 2.0 m·s−1, Tin = 300 K, Tw = 280 K, Win = 0.010)
condensate film, with the interface velocity, the sub-
cooling and the interface water vapor mass fraction
makes the interface boundary condition complicated
and dramatically different from the dry air heat trans-
fer. These differences will be discussed below in order
to comprehensively conclude reasonableness of ne-
glecting the condensate film.
3.2 Local condensation mass rate and local con-
densate film thickness
The humid air condensation is the main reason
that the physical fields in Section 3.1 are different
from dry ones. With condensation occurring, the forced
convection of humid air makes water vapor flow di-
rectly to and cross the interface. So the diffusion and
the advective mass transfer both contribute to con-
densation. Here, the total condensation mass rate, m,
for different wall temperature is shown in Fig. 5. It is
obvious that the local m shows larger for high uin and
high Win. The effect of uin on m becomes significant
for higher Win, and vice versa.
When condensation continually occurs, the con-
densate film will form on the wall and flows down,
see Fig. 3. Therefore, the local condensate film thick-
ness δ depends primarily on the condensation rate by
considering Figs. 5 and 6 together. Intuitively, the
higher uin could drag the film thinner for no slip inter-
face conditions. However, the effect of uin on the in-
terface tangential velocity component up, is weak dur-
ing present study, as the viscosity ratio of the liquid
and air-vapor mixture is around 60-100 and subse-
quently the direct contribution of uin to up can be ne-
glected. But it is obvious from Fig. 5 that uin shows
positive influence on m, so the higher uin devotes
much to thicker δ due to m increase (see Fig. 6). It
also can be seen that δ shows similar trend with the
condensation mass rate m. Threlkeld [20] stated the
condensate film thickness of around 0.1 mm in the
finned-tube heat exchanger design for wet conditions,
(b) Velocity component (u/m·s−1) distribution
 Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 19, No. 6, December 2011 949

(a) Tw = 280 K (b) Tw = 320 K

Win: ■ 0.010; ● 0.013; ▲ 0.016; ▼ 0.020 Win: ■ 0.07; ● 0.08; ▲ 0.09; ▼ 0.10; ◄ 0.11; ► 0.12
Figure 5 Effects of uin and Win on local condensation rate (Tin−Tw = 20 K, x = 0.05 m)

(a) Tw = 280 K (b) Tw = 320 K

Win: ■ 0.010; ● 0.013; ▲ 0.016; ▼ 0.020 Win: ■ 0.07; ● 0.08; ▲ 0.09; ▼ 0.10; ◄ 0.11; ► 0.12
Figure 6 Effects of uin and Win on condensate film thickness (Tin−Tw = 20 K, x = 0.05 m)

(a) Tw = 280 K (b) Tw = 320 K

Win: ■ 0.010; ● 0.013; ▲ 0.016; ▼ 0.020 Win: ■ 0.07; ● 0.08; ▲ 0.09; ▼ 0.10; ◄ 0.11; ► 0.12
Figure 7 Effects of uin and Win on interfacial temperature drop (Tin−Tw = 20 K, x = 0.05 m)

and his proposal is approximate to the value in Fig. 6
(b) for Win = 0.11 and uin = 2.5 m·s−1.
3.3 Temperature drop at phase interface
The interfacial thermal resistance appears when
there exists water vapor passing through the phase
interface into condensate, so the temperature drop ex-
ists for humid air condensation, similar to the case of
pure vapor condensation.
The local temperature drop across the phase in-
terface increases with both increasing uin and Win, see
Fig. 7. For two typical cold wall temperatures the in-
terface temperature drops are both less than 0.0003 K,
which are smaller than the precision of equipment for
temperature measurement and the temperature drop is
in contrast to that of 0.1-0.5 K for pure vapor con-
densation concluded by Rose [21]. Thus, the interfacial
thermal resistance due to phase change is quite small
950 Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 19, No. 6, December 2011
as justified in [21-24], who ignored the effects of the
interfacial thermal resistance.
3.4 Local subcooling of the condensate film
The condensate film has been neglected in pre-
vious numerical studies [2, 8, 10], presuming that the
condensate film was thin and the thermal resistance
was small. Here, the local subcooling of the conden-
sate film for two cold wall temperatures is shown in
Fig. 8.
(a) Tw = 280 K
Win: ■ 0.010; ● 0.013; ▲ 0.016; ▼ 0.020
(b) Tw = 320 K
Win: ■ 0.07; ● 0.08; ▲ 0.09; ▼ 0.10; ◄ 0.11; ► 0.12
Figure 8 Local subcooling of condensate film (Tin−Tw = 20
K, x = 0.05 m)
The local subcooling shows linear increase with
uin. The subcooling for low Win is less than 0.06 K, as
shown in Fig. 8 (a). However, for higher Win the sub-
cooling can be larger than 0.56 K, around 2.8% of the
total temperature difference between the inlet air and
the cold wall. Such a large subcooling will further
influence the condensate temperature and mass trans-
fer rate, because the interface should obey Eq. (14).
Thus, the temperature drop across the liquid layer is
significant for high Win and high uin, both of which
influence nearly linearly the subcooling. Hence, the
effects of the subcooling on heat transfer should be
considered for relatively high Win and uin, which are
common conditions in containment safety analysis,
cooling towers and the heat recovery of the combust-
ing exhausts.
3.5 Local interface tangential velocity component
As discussed in Section 3.2, uin shows little in-
fluence on up. Assume that the dynamic viscosity ratio
of the water and humid air at phase interface is 100
and Eq. (12) can be simplified to
∂um,i
μl ∂ul ,i ∂ul ,i
= ≈ 100 (37)
∂y μm ∂y ∂y
The velocity component distribution in Fig. 4 (b)
indicates that the u within the condensate film varies
slightly and within the same magnitude in y direction,
so the partial differential term on the right side of Eq.
(37) can be expressed linearly for local δ. For given
step size Δym ( Δym ≈ 0.001 for 40 meshes) next to
the phase interface, up can be expressed as:
um,k
up = ui = um,i ≈ (38)
100
Δy + 1
δ ( x) m
where um,k is the longitudinal velocity component of
humid air next to the phase interface um,i with the nu-
merical step size of Δym .
Figure 6 shows that even for higher m, the local
condensate film thickness (x=0.05) is no more than
1.2×10−4 m, then Eq. (38) can be rewritten as
um,k
up ≈ ≈ 1.2 × 10−3 um,k (39)
100 −3
1.0 × 10 + 1
1.2 × 10−4
Equation (39) indicates that the up will not increase
dramatically, by directly increasing uin. Although it is
concluded that uin influences up by increasing con-
densation rate, m, as shown in Fig. 5 slopes of thick-
ness become smaller by increasing uin, which means
that the magnitude of δ is around 10−4 m. Hence, up
will change small for humid air condensation on the
vertical wall. The conclusion is proved by numerical
results shown in Fig. 9.
3.6 Local interface normal velocity component
The phase interface is permeable to water vapor
during condensation, but is impermeable to air. Thus,
there is velocity component vn normal to the phase
interface due to the advection and sucking effects of
water vapor condensation, as shown in Fig. 10.
It can be seen that low condensation rate makes
vn in Fig. 10 (a) very low. But when the condensation
rate is large, the velocity can hit −0.001 m·s−1 and its
effect does not lie in the momentum equation, but the
latent heat from condensation. For example, when
uin = 3.0 m·s−1 and Win = 0.12, the latent heat flux, qad,
is about 180 W·m−2 as calculated from
qad = ρ m,iWi vn hf ,g (40)
 Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 19, No. 6, December 2011 951

(a) Tw = 280 K (b) Tw = 320 K

Win: ■ 0.010; ● 0.013; ▲ 0.016; ▼ 0.020 Win: ■ 0.07; ● 0.08; ▲ 0.09; ▼ 0.10; ◄ 0.11; ► 0.12
Figure 9 Interfacial velocity component parallel to vertical wall (Tin−Tw = 20 K, x = 0.05 m)

(a) Tw = 280 K (b) Tw = 320 K

Win: ■ 0.010; ● 0.013; ▲ 0.016; ▼ 0.020 Win: ■ 0.07; ● 0.08; ▲ 0.09; ▼ 0.10; ◄ 0.11; ► 0.12
Figure 10 Interface velocity component of gas mixture normal to vertical wall (Tin−Tw = 20 K, x = 0.05 m)

Therefore, the advective mass rate is important if vn is

large enough. The advective mass fraction can be ex-
pressed by Eqs. (18) and (19):
mod ρ mWi vn
= = Wi = f (Tm,i ) (41)
mt ρ D ∂W
1 − Wv,i ∂n
i

Equation (41) indicates that the advective mass

fraction is the single function of phase interface tem-
perature Tm,i, independent of Win and uin. So according
to the analysis on subcooling, if the subcooling is large Figure 11 Effect of wall temperature on advective mass
enough, the interface advective mass transfer will show transfer fraction (Tin = 345 K, Win = 0.10, uin = 2.0 m·s−1)
much difference from the cold wall. It can be seen
from Fig. 11 that the advective mass transfer fraction
will grow faster by increasing the phase interface Volchkov et al. [8], which were also based on the
temperature. Therefore, high wall temperature and film-wise condensation, but there exists a little differ-
large condensation rate make the assumption of ne- ence from model of Comini and Savino [1], which is a
glecting the condensate film unreasonable. theoretical model based on Tw:
−1
qc ⎡ ⎤
2
4 COMPARISONS AND EXPERIMENTAL W − Ww hf ,h Tw
= ⎢1 + Le 3 ⋅ ∞ ⎥ (42)
OBSERVATION qt ⎢⎣ 1 − Ww c p (Tin − Tw ) ⎥⎦

The present study is compared with previous However, these numerical and analytical results
work for the ratio of the condensation heat transfer to do not agree well with the experimental data from
the total heat transfer, as shown in Fig. 12. Takarada et al. [25] for low value of (W∞−Ww). Previ-
The present results agree well with data from ous studies by Volchkov et al. [8] also found such
952 Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 19, No. 6, December 2011
Figure 12 Comparison of the condensation heat flux
among different work (Tin = 313.15 K, Tw = 294.15 K)
—○— present numerical results; ▼ experimental data [25];
● numerical results [8]; Comini and Savino model [1]
discrepancy and they attributed it to the waviness of
film flow. However, the difference between Win and
the saturated humid air Ww at wall temperature is less
than 0.022, and it is impossible to result in wavy flow
or turbulent flow for such condensation. Here, Ww is
often assumed to be the saturated humid air at Tw, as
the phase interface temperature is an important pa-
rameter for condensation, but is hard to obtain form
experimental observation.
Therefore, observation was carried out on the
vertical cold wall, with Win = 0.02045 and Ww =
0.00575. The condensate on the wall (in Fig. 13) shows
irregular shape, which is very complex [26] and dif-
ferent from the numerical film assumption.
Figure 13 Observation of the condensate film on the ver-
tical cold wall (Surface material: hydrophilic aluminum foil
surface with static contact angle 34.2°)
There are various partial rivulets, film and drop-
lets that adhered to the cold wall. The irregular con-
densate shape augments the effective surface for heat
and mass transfer, so the heat and mass transfer are
both enhanced. On the other hand, according to the
Yang-Laplace Equation, curvature of the irregular
small shape restrains mass transfer due to water vapor
partial pressure drop significant for large curvature.
Therefore, the mass transfer driving force ΔW be-
comes small and the enhancement of irregular phase
interface on mass transfer is not as significant as on
heat transfer. This may explain the difference between
the numerical or theoretical results from the experi-
mental conclusion.
As there is lack of experimental research on hu-
mid air, there has been no experiment with vertical
wall length of 0.1 m. The comparison between the
present numerical solution and early experimental data
by Lebedev et al. [27] was carried out on the total
convective heat transfer coefficient ht. According to
the experiment [27], the length of the cold wall is 0.6
m. Here, the numerical length and meshes are both
increased to match the same condition with experi-
ment. ht was defined as [27]:
q
ht = (43)
Tin − Tw
The results independent of meshes was achieved
with the grids of (600×100 for the humid air numeri-
cal region), as described in Section 3.2. Unfortunately,
experimental data by Lebedev et al. [27] uin were
given by a small range, but not specific values. So the
experimental average uin is adopted here for present
numerical solutions. The comparison is based on the
relative humidity and these results fit well, as shown
in Fig. 14.
Figure 14 Comparison of ht between numerical and ex-
perimental results (L = 0.6 m, H = 0.1 m, Tw = 278.15 K)
uin (present, Tin = 331.65 K)/m·s−1: ■ 3.75; ● 2.15; ▲ 0.70
uin (exp. [27], Tin = 329.15-334.15 K)/m·s−1: □ 3.6-3.9;
○ 2.0-2.3; △ 0.70
5 CONCLUSIONS
Condensation of humid air flowing over a vertical
plate was analyzed numerically. The local condensation
rates, condensate film thickness, characteristic tempera-
ture drop of the phase interface, subcooling, and tangen-
tial and normal velocities of humid air were numeri-
cally studied for various cold wall temperatures and
inlet conditions at x = 0.05 m. The results showed that:
The condensation mass rate, m, almost increases
linearly with uin and higher Win contributes much to
the effect of uin on m. The influence of uin and Win on
the local condensate film thickness, δ, is similar with
their influence on m, but δ is less than 10−4 m, with the
condensate temperature linearly increase along y di-
rection, except the inlet domain. The phase interface
temperature drop is very small, no matter m is high or
 Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 19, No. 6, December 2011 953

low. However, the subcooling of condensate film w cold wall

changes significantly with uin and Win, with the local ∞ bulk flow
subcooling larger than 0.56 °C for higher m. The in-
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