A study on non darcy convective flow from a vertical plate embedded in a saturated porous medium with phase change

Abstract

Convective heat transfer (free and forced) with melting effect in porous medium has important applications in magma solidification, soil physics, geothermal energy extraction, chemical engineering, latent energy storage systems and in biological systems. Also in high temperature applications like plasma physics, nuclear reactors, liquid metal flows, magneto hydrodynamic accelerations and in power generation systems radiation effect plays an important role. Further the prediction of heat transfer characteristics for mixed convection in porous media is important due to its practical engineering applications such as oil recovery and food processing. In all the above applications, understanding the boundary layer development and convective heat transfer characteristics are of primary requirement to further investigate the concerned problem. Hence in chapter 1, the topic of the study of thesis is introduced quoting relevant earlier works. newlineMelting effect with heat and mass transfer in porous medium has received much attention in recent years because of it applications in casting, welding etc. Therefore concentration with melting effect on non-Darcy convective heat transfer from a vertical plate embedded in saturated porous medium is studied in Chapter 2 as previous studies in the literature have not considered the solute dispersion with melting effect in their studies. newline The effects of melting with variable permeability have many applications such as in the fixed bed catalytic reactors, packed bed heat exchangers, hyperthermia treatment, space applications etc. Hence in Chapter 3 the combined effects of melting and variable permeability on non-Darcy mixed convective flow over a vertical plate is explored for aiding and opposing flows as most of the reported research in the literature have not contemplated the combined effects of melting and variable permeability. newline