A simple engineering approach is presented to describe the heat transport performance of a tubular setup loaded with closed cross-flow structure (CCFS) packing elements, based on the dominant convective contribution of liquid to heat transport. This model is more accurate to describe the heat transfer performance of CCFS than the conventional two parameter model using an effective radial conductivity and a wall heat transfer coefficient [1]. The model contains only a single unknown parameter to be estimated from experimental data with even a more accurate description of the experimentally determined temperature profiles; on average 24% smaller sum of squared residuals than the two parameter model. The resulting estimated wall heat transfer coefficient follows a linear dependency with the liquid hold-up in the set-up. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.