Application of Porous Media in Heat-Transfer and Mass-Transfer Enhancements: A Brief Review

Abstract

The heat and/or mass transfer is crucial in various energy conversion and storage systems such as heat exchangers and energy storage systems, since they highly affect the efficiency of energy conversion and transport. Enhancing the heat and/or mass transfer within these systems is the most important means to improve system efficiency. Porous media have found wide application in enhancing the heat conduction, mass diffusion, or both, for different energy conversion and storage systems. In this chapter, a brief review on the application of different porous media for transport enhancement in various systems was made, indicating that using porous media is capable of enhancing the transport ability appreciably, sometimes being up to hundreds of times in some physical problems. This review could provide some insight into the transport enhancement design of various energy conversion and storage systems, which is especially important in the background of carbon neutralization.