Soret and Dufour effects on free convection heat and mass transfer from an arbitrarily inclined plate in a porous medium with constant wall temperature and concentration

The free convection boundary layer flow over an arbitrarily inclined heated plate in a porous medium with Soret and Dufour effects is studied by transforming the governing equations into a universal form. The generalized equations can be used to derive the similarity solutions for limiting cases of horizontal and vertical plates and to calculate the heat and mass transfer characteristics between these two limiting cases. The heat and mass transfer characteristics are presented as functions of Soret parameter, Dufour parameter, inclination variable, Lewis number, and buoyancy ratio. Results show that an increase in the Dufour parameter tends to decrease the local heat transfer rate, and an increase in the Soret parameter tends to decrease the local mass transfer rate. As the inclination variable increases, the local Nusselt number and the local Sherwood number decrease from their respective values for horizontal plates, reach their respective minima, and then increase to their respective values for vertical plates. The minima are where the tangential and normal components of buoyancy force are comparable.