Stability analysis of thermosolutal convection in a horizontal porous layer using a thermal non-equilibrium model

A stability analysis is carried out to investigate the onset of thermosolutal convection in a horizontal porous layer when the solid and fluid phases are not in a local thermal equilibrium, and the solubility of the dissolved component depends on temperature. To study how the reaction and thermal non-equilibrium affect the double-diffusive convection, the effects of scaled inter-phase heat transfer coefficient H and dimensionless reaction rate k on thermosolutal convection are discussed. The critical Rayleigh number and the corresponding wave number for the stability and overstability convections are obtained. Specially, asymptotic analysis for both small and large values of H and k is presented, and the corresponding asymptotic solutions are compared with numerical results. At last, a nonlinear stability analysis is presented to study how H and k affect the Nusselt number. (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000287553100007&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701ThermodynamicsEngineering, MechanicalMechanicsSCI(E)EI8ARTICLE178-873