Scale analysis and parametric study of transient heat mass transfer in thepresence of nonporous solid adsorption

A transient, two-dimensional theoretical analysis of combined heal and mass transfer in the presence of adsorption/desorption is developed to study th e fundamentals of heat and mass transfer dynamics. A parallel-plate rectang ular channel is used as a model system. Appropriate surface boundary condit ions for heat and mass transfer and adsorption/desorption interactions are formulated. A scale analysis of the governing equations is performed in ord er to identify the dimensionless physical parameters governing the process and to obtain the order-of-magnitude estimates for characteristic time cons tants of the system dynamics. Predictions of the scale analysis are validat ed against the results of the parametric study obtained through the numeric al solutions of the governing equations. The findings demonstrate that the scale analysis is a very powerful analytical tool which allows one to evalu ate the effects of different process parameters on heat and mass transfer d ynamics in the presence of adsorption without performing the exhaustive num erical calculations.