Experimental investigation and scale analysis on melting of salty ice in a 3D-printed cavity filled with porous media

Abstract: While significant interests have been devoted to the double diffusive phase change heat transfer of binary solutions, the understanding on the melting heat transfer of salty ice in porous media is still imcomplete. This work aims to explore the melting heat transfer characteristics of salty ice in a square cavity filled with homogeneous porous media subjected to lateral heating. In order to facilitate the visualization of melting dynamics in a uniform porous media, a three-dimensional (3D) printed transparent cavity filled with porous matrix was manufactured, featuring an open upper end. Aqueous solutions of sodium chloride at concentration both higher and lower than the eutectic concentration were investigated. Lateral heating experiments with constant heat flux were conducted in a subzero temperature environment. The effect of heating power, initial concentrations and different sizes of porous matrix was investigated. Distinct phenomena were observed based on the concentration of the aqueous solution. Specifically, the concentration lower than the eutectic concentration results in an upward bending melting interface. Whereas the concentration surpassing the eutectic concentration resulted in a downward bending melting interface. In the presence of salt, a melting convex appears at the bottom of the melting interface and manifests during the whole melting process. Notably, smaller matrix enables faster melting rate. Furthermore, three distinct stages were revealed in our experiments, characterized as conduction, mixture of conduction and ultimately convection stage. The correlations for Nu and the average propagation rate of mushy/liquid interface were established by order of magnitude analysis and fit well with the experiments.