Theoretical Study of Heat Transfer through a Sun Space Filled with a Porous Medium

A theoretical study had been conducted to detect the effect of using a porous medium in sunspace to reduce heating load and overcoming coldness of winter in the cold regions. In this work, the heat transferred and stored in the storage wall was investigated. The mathematical model was unsteady, heat conduction equation with nonlinear boundary conditions was solved by using finite difference method and the solution technique of heat conduction had based on the Crank Nicholson method. The results had adopted on the aspect ratio (H/L=30), Darcy number (Da=10-3), porosity (φ=0.35) and particle to fluid thermal conductivity ratio (kp/kf=38.5). The results showed that using the porous medium had enhanced the heat transferred and stored in the storage wall. For the outside storage wall temperature, an increase of 19.7% was achieved by using the porous medium instead of the air, while it was 20.3% for the inside storage wall temperature