An integral treatment for combined heat and mass transfer by mixed convection along vertical surface in a saturated porous medium

Abstract

Combined free and forced convection heat and mass transfer over an impermeable vertical surface embedded in a saturated porous medium is considered. A similarity transformation has been used to study the mixed convection boundary-layer flow over a semi-infinite vertical flat plate. Integral solutions are derived for the coupled nonlinear similarity equations of coupled heat and mass transfer in porous media for the case where the free stream velocity and temperature and concentration near the wall are kept constant. The governing parameters for the problem under consideration are the Lewis number Le, the buoyancy ratio N and mixed convection parameter (). The results for the heat and mass transfer coefficients in terms of Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are represented graphically for the various values of governing parameters of the problem. The heat and mass transfer in the boundary layer region has been analyzed for aiding and opposing flows. Key words: Convection in porous media, heat and mass transfer, integral method, boundary layer.