Hydromagnetic simultaneous heat and mass transfer by mixed convection from a vertical plate embedded in a stratified porous medium with thermal dispersion effects

The problem of steady, laminar, hydromagnetic simultaneous heat and mass transfer by mixed convection flow over a vertical plate embedded in a uniform porous medium with a stratified free stream and taking into account the presence of thermal dispersion is investigated for the case of power-law variations of both the wall temperature and concentration. Certain transformations are employed to transform the governing differential equations to a local similarity form. The transformed equations are solved numerically by an efficient implicit, iterative, finite-difference scheme. The obtained results are checked against previously published work on special cases of the problem and are found to be in excellent agreement. A parametric study illustrating the influence of the magnetic field, porous medium inertia effects, heat generation or absorption, lateral wall mass flux, concentration to thermal buoyancy ratio, and the Lewis number on the fluid velocity, temperature and concentration as well as the Nusselt and the Sherwood numbers is conducted. The results of this parametric study is shown graphically and the physical aspects of the problem are discussed. Received on 17 November 1998