Coupled heat and mass transfer by natural convection adjacent to a permeable horizontal cylinder in a saturated porous medium

Abstract

The heat and mass transfer characteristics of free convection about a permeable horizontal cylinder embedded in porous media under the coupled effects of thermal and mass diffusion are numerically analyzed. The surface of the horizontal cylinder is maintained at a uniform wall temperature and uniform wall concentration. The transformed governing equations are obtained and solved by Keller box method. Numerical results for the dimensionless temperature profiles, the dimensionless concentration profiles, the Nusselt number and the Sherwood number are presented. Increasing the buoyancy ratio N and the transpiration parameter f w increases the Nusselt number and the Sherwood number. For thermally assisting flow, when Lewis number Le increases, the Nusselt (Sherwood) number decreases (increases). Whereas, for thermally opposing flow, both the Nusselt number and the Sherwood number increase with increasing the Lewis number.