Numerical study of Soret and Dufour effects on heat and mass transfer from natural convection flow over a vertical porous medium with variable wall heat fluxes

A study has been carried out to obtain the solutions for heat and mass transfer from natural convection flow along a vertical surface with variable heat fluxes embedded in a porous medium due to thermal-diffusion (Soret) and diffusion-thermo (Dufour) effects. The buoyancy induced boundary layer adjacent to a vertical surface is analyzed using a non-Darcy flow model. The parameters for inertia, buoyancy ratio, exponent of heat flux, position and diffusion have been examined. The governing differential equations of continuity, momentum, energy and concentration are transformed into a set of coupled equations and solved using similarity analysis with numerical technique. Results show the velocity, temperature and concentration profiles related to local Nusselt and Sherwood numbers at different magnitude of Soret and Dufour numbers.