Soret and Dufour effects on natural convection heat and mass transfer from a vertical cone in a porous medium

This work studies the Soret and Dufour effects on the boundary layer flow due to natural convection heat and mass transfer over a downward-pointing vertical cone in a porous medium saturated with Newtonian fluids with constant wall temperature and concentration. A similarity analysis is performed, and the obtained similar equations are solved by cubic spline collocation method. The effects of the Dufour parameter, Soret parameter, Lewis number, and buoyancy ratio on the heat and mass transfer characteristics have been studied. The local Nusselt number tends to decrease as the Dufour parameter is increased. The effect of the Dufour parameter on the local Nusselt number becomes more significant as the Lewis number is increased. Moreover, an increase in the Soret number leads to a decrease in the local Sherwood number and an increase in the local Nusselt number. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.