摘要

Heat and mass transfer in heat-generating porous medium are important issues in both scientific studies and practical applications. Analysis of the Three Mile Island accident revealed significance of these factors for the problem of safety of nuclear reactors. In this work, we applied developed numerical code to model two-phase convection and heat transfer in porous medium with non-uniform heat generation. A model based on the concepts of relative permeabilities and Leverett function has been used. Special emphasis has been made on the arising multidimensional effects. It is shown that under certain conditions dynamics of steam-liquid flows is significantly affected by effect of "capillary pump" which supplies the regions of intense boiling with extra liquid. As a result maximum heat flux, which can be removed without draining and overheating of the medium, can significantly exceed that estimated in 1-D approach.