Transient magneto-micropolar free convection heat and mass transfer through a non-Darcy porous medium channel with variable thermal conductivity and heat source effects

Abstract

The laminar, fully developed, transient magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) free convection heat and mass transfer of an electrically conducting micropolar fluid between two vertical plates containing a non-Darcy porous medium with heat generation/absorption and asymmetric wall temperature and concentration has been discussed in this article. A similarity transformation is used to render the problem into a system of coupled, partial, differential equations, which are solved using the finite-element method (FEM). The solutions are validated with a robust finite difference method (FDM) solver. The present work examines the effect of Darcian parameter, Forchheimer parameter, heat absorption/generation parameter, vortex viscosity parameter, buoyancy ratio parameter, magnetic parameter, and variable thermal conductivity parameter on velocity, angular velocity, temperature and concentration profiles. Space—time graphs of velocity and microrotation are also plotted to provide a better perspective of the flowfield evolution with respect to time. Applications of the study may arise in, for example, packed-bed chemical reactors, materials processing, magnetic field control of chemical engineering transport processes in filter media, purification of hydrocarbons with electromagnetic fields, etc.