The Local Thermal Nonequilibrium Interface implements heat transfer in porous media for which the temperatures into the porous matrix and the fluid are not in equilibrium.

Nonequilibrium heat transfer in porous media for binary systems of rigid porous matrix and fluid phase are governed by a set of two equations. These are the usual heat equations for solids and fluids, multiplied by the volume fractions θp and (1 − θp) respectively, and with an additional source term quantifying exchanged heat between both phases (2.12 and 2.13 in Ref. 13):

The fluid velocity is often deduced from a porous velocity up, coming for example from Darcy’s law or Brinkman equations, according to:

The Local Thermal Nonequilibrium multiphysics coupling adds the exchanged opposite heat sources qsf(Tf − Ts) and qsf(Ts − Tf) that one phase receives from or releases to the other when respective temperatures differ. The porous temperature, T, has the following definition (Ref. 34):

The Local Thermal Nonequilibrium multiphysics feature provides a built-in correlation for qsf in the spherical pellet bed configuration (2.14, 2.15, and 2.16 in Ref. 13):

The specific surface area, asf (SI unit: 1/m), for a bed packed with spherical particles of radius rp is:

The interstitial heat transfer coefficient, hsf (SI unit: W/(m2·K)), satisfies the relation:

where β = 10 for spherical particles, and Nu is the fluid-to-solid Nusselt number derived from following correlation (Ref. 14):

The Prandtl number, Pr, and particle Reynolds number, Rep, are defined by:

Because the Local Thermal Nonequilibrium multiphysics coupling multiplies each energy equation by its volume fraction, θp and (1 − θp) for solid and fluid phases respectively, a heat source or heat flux defined in a couple heat transfer interface is also accounted with that ratio. As shown in Equation 4-27 and Equation 4-28, the volumetric heat sources θpQs and (1 − θp)Qf are applied to the energy equations while the Heat Source features of each physics interface specify Qs and Qf.