Comment on “Numerical study with OpenFOAM on heat conduction problems in heterogeneous media” by K. Zhang, C.-A. Wang, J.-Y. Tan, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol. 124 (2018) 1156–1162

•LaplacianFoam in OpenFOAM® solves the scalar diffusion equation.•Thermal diffusivity may be often incorrectly used in heat conduction problems.•It is tempting to make just a little change from a constant to a scalar field.•To correctly model heat conduction in heterogeneous media, ρ, cp and λ is needed. In the paper “Numerical study with OpenFOAM on heat conduction problems in heterogeneous media” by K. Zhang, C.-A. Wang, J.-Y. Tan, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol. 124 (2018) 1156–1162 the authors modify laplacianFoam from open-source CFD package OpenFOAM® to solve heat conduction problems in heterogeneous media by changing the diffusion coefficient from a constant value to a scalar field. Their paper clearly demonstrates a fundamental, overlooked, and common mistake in rearranging the heat conduction equation, which cannot be replaced with the temperature diffusion equation. In this comment, we provide clear evidence through mathematical derivations and numerical examples calculated in OpenFOAM®.