Modeling of heat and mass transfer in a hydrocarbon fluid under inductive heating.

Results of numerical simulations of the thermal action on a high-viscosity hydrocarbon fluid with temperature-dependent viscosity and thermal conductivity are presented. A system of equations of thermal convection in the Boussinesq approximation is used as the constitutive equations to describe the convection of the hydrocarbon fluid. The dynamics of the temperature field and convective structures in the fluid is studied. The spatial motion of the fluid is found to be locally nonuniform; the motion is accompanied by vortex flows; as a result, two regions with significantly different temperatures are formed in the medium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]