Soret and Dufour effects on natural convection flow past a vertical surface in a porous medium with variable viscosity

Abstract

The heat and mass transfer characteristics of natural convection about a vertical surface embedded in a saturated porous medium subject to variable viscosity are numerically analyzed, by taking into account the diffusion-thermo (Dufour) and thermal-diffusion (Soret) effects. The governing equations of continuity, momentum, energy, and concentrations are transformed into nonlinear ordinary differential equations, using similarity transformations, and then solved by using Runge-Kutta-Gill method along with shooting technique. The parameters of the problem are variable viscosity, buoyancy ratio, Lewis number, Prandtl number, Dufour effect, Soret effect, and Schmidt number. The velocity, temperature, and concentration distributions are presented graphically. The Nusselt number and Sherwood number are also derived and discussed numerically. Copyright © 2012 M. B. K. Moorthy and K. Senthilvadivu.