Natural convection heat and mass transfer of non-Newtonian power law fluids with yield stress in porous media from a vertical plate with variable wall heat and mass fluxes

Abstract

This work studies the heat and mass transfer by natural convection from a vertical plate with variable wall heat and mass fluxes in a porous medium saturated with a non-Newtonian power law fluid with yield stress for the general case of power law variations in wall heat and mass fluxes. The governing equations are transformed into a dimensionless form by the similarity transformation and then solved by a cubic spline collocation method. Results are presented for velocity, temperature, and concentration profiles, as well as the Nusselt and Sherwood numbers for various parameters of the power law fluid with yield stress in porous media. The existence of threshold pressure gradient in the power law fluids tends to decrease the fluid velocity and the local Nusselt and Sherwood numbers. An increase in the power law exponent increases the local Nusselt and Sherwood numbers.