Thermal dispersion in convective flow in porous media has been numerically investigated using a two-dimensional periodic model of porous structure. A macroscopically uniform flow is assumed to pass through a collection of square rods placed regularly in an infinite space, where a macroscopically linear temperature gradient is imposed perpendicularly to the flow direction. Due to the periodicity of the model, only one structural unit is taken for a calculation domain to resolve an entire domain of porous medium. Continuity, Navier–Stokes and energy equations are solved numerically to describe the microscopic velocity and temperature fields at a pore scale. The numerical results thus obtained are integrated over a unit structure to evaluate the thermal dispersion and the molecular diffusion due to tortuosity. The resulting correlation for a high-Peclet-number range agrees well with available experimental data.

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The local similarity solution procedure was successfully adopted to investigate non-Darcian flow and heat transfer through a boundary layer developed over a horizontal flat plate in a highly porous medium. The full boundary layer equations, which consider the effects of convective inertia, solid boundary, and porous inertia in addition to the Darcy flow resistance, were solved using novel transformed variables deduced from a scale analysis. The results from this local similarity solution are found to be in good agreement with those obtained from a finite difference method. The effects of the convective inertia term, boundary viscous term, and porous inertia term on the velocity and temperature fields were examined in detail. Furthermore, useful asymptotic expressions for the local Nusselt number were derived in consideration of possible physical limiting conditions.