Challenges and progress on the modelling of entropy generation in porous media: a review

Depending upon the ultimate design, the use of porous media in thermal and chemical systems can provide significant operational advantages, including helping to maintain a uniform temperature distribution, increasing the heat transfer rate, controlling reaction rates, and improving heat flux absorption. For this reason, numerous experimental and numerical investigations have been performed on thermal and chemical systems that utilize various types of porous materials. Recently, previous thermal analyses of porous materials embedded in channels or cavities have been re-evaluated using a local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) modelling technique. Consequently, the second law analyses of these systems using the LTNE method have been a point of focus in a number of more recent investigations. This has resulted in a series of investigations in various porous systems, and comparisons of the results obtained from traditional local thermal equilibrium (LTE) and the more recent LTNE modelling approach. Moreover, the rapid development and deployment of micro-manufacturing techniques have resulted in an increase in manufacturing flexibility that has made the use of these materials much easier for many micro-thermal and chemical system applications, including emerging energy-related fields such as micro-reactors, micro-combustors, solar thermal collectors and many others. The result is a renewed interest in the thermal performance and the exergetic analysis of these porous thermochemical systems. This current investigation reviews the recent developments of the second law investigations and analyses in thermal and chemical problems in porous media. The effects of various parameters on the entropy generation in these systems are discussed, with particular attention given to the influence of local thermodynamic equilibrium and non-equilibrium upon the second law performance of these systems. This discussion is then followed by a review of the mathematical methods that have been used for simulations. Finally, conclusions and recommendations regarding the unexplored systems and the areas in the greatest need of further investigations are summarized

Similarity solutions of boundary layer flows in a channel filled by non-newtonian fluids

Similarity solutions of non-Newtonian fluids are getting much attention to researchers because of their practical importance in the field of science and engineering. Currently, most of researchers focus their work on non-Newtonian fluids over a sheet. However, only a few of them pay their attention towards the geometry of channel due to the complexity of governing equations. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the numerical solutions of new problems of laminar incompressible Nanofluids, Casson fluids and Micropolar fluids under various fluid flow conditions. Each considered fluid involves porous channel walls, stretching or shrinking walls, and expanding or contracting walls with the influence of various physical parameters. Mathematical formulations such as the law of conservation, momentum or angular momentum, heat and mass transfer are performed on the new problems. After the mathematical formulation is developed, the governing fluid flow equations of partial differential equations are then transformed into boundary value problems (BVPs) of nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) by using the suitable similarity transformations. After converting high order BVPs into the equivalent first order system of BVPs, shootlib function in Maple 18 software is employed to obtain the similarity solutions of nonlinear ODEs. The numerical results in this study are compared with the existing solutions in literature for the purpose of validation. The results are found to be in good agreement with the existing solutions. Multiple solutions of some of the problems particularly in porous channel with expanding or contracting walls also exist for the case of strong suction. This study has successfully find the numerical solutions of the new problems for various fluid flow conditions. The results obtained from this study can serve as a theoretical reference in related fields

Oscillatory dissipative conjugate heat and mass transfer in chemically-reacting micropolar flow with wall couple stress : a finite element numerical study

High temperature non-Newtonian materials processing provides a stimulating area for process engineering simulation. Motivated by emerging applications in this area, the present article investigates the time-dependent free convective flow of a chemically-reacting micropolar fluid from a vertical plate oscillating in its own plane adjacent to a porous medium. Thermal radiative, viscous dissipation and wall couple stress effects are included. The Rosseland diffusion approximation is used to model uni-directional radiative heat flux in the energy equation. Darcy’s model is adopted to mimic porous medium drag force effects. The governing two-dimensional conservation equations are normalized with appropriate variables and transformed into a dimensionless, coupled, nonlinear system of partial differential equations under the assumption of low Reynolds number. The governing boundary value problem is then solved under physically viable boundary conditions numerically with a finite element method based on the weighted residual approach. Graphical illustrations for velocity, micro-rotation (angular velocity), temperature and concentration are obtained as functions of the emerging physical parameters i.e. thermal radiation, viscous dissipation, first order chemical reaction parameter etc. Furthermore, friction factor (skin friction), surface heat transfer and mass transfer rates have been tabulated quantitatively for selected thermo-physical parameters. A comparison with previously published paper is made to check the validity and accuracy of the present finite element solutions under some limiting cases and excellent agreement is attained. Additionally, a mesh independence study is conducted. The model is relevant to reactive polymeric materials processing simulation

Energy Transfer in Mixed Convection MHD Flow of Nanofluid Containing Different Shapes of Nanoparticles in a Channel Filled with Saturated Porous Medium

Energy transfer in mixed convection unsteady magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow of an incompressible nanofluid inside a channel filled with a saturated porous medium is investigated. The walls of the channel are kept at constant temperature, and uniform magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the direction of the flow. Three different flow situations are discussed on the basis of physical boundary conditions. The problem is first written in terms of partial differential equations (PDEs), then reduces to ordinary differential equations (ODEs) by using a perturbation technique and solved for solutions of velocity and temperature. Four different shapes of nanoparticles inside ethylene glycol (C2H6O2) and water (H2O)‐based nanofluids are used in equal volume fraction. The solutions of velocity and temperature are plotted graphically, and the physical behavior of the problem is discussed for different flow parameters. It is evaluated from this problem that viscosity and thermal conductivity are the dominant parameters responsible for different consequences of motion and temperature of nanofluids. Due to greater viscosity and thermal conductivity, C2H6O2‐based nanofluid is regarded as better convectional base fluid assimilated to H2O

Numerical study of slip effects on unsteady aysmmetric bioconvective nanofluid flow in a porous microchannel with an expanding/ contracting upper wall using Buongiorno’s model

In this paper, the unsteady fully developed forced convective flow of viscous incompressible biofluid that contains both nanoparticles and gyrotactic microorganisms in a horizontal micro-channel is studied. Buongiorno’s model is employed. The upper channel wall is either expanding or contracting and permeable and the lower wall is static and impermeable. The plate separation is therefore a function of time. Velocity, temperature, nano-particle species (mass) and motile micro-organism slip effects are taken into account at the upper wall. By using the appropriate similarity transformation for the velocity, temperature, nanoparticle volume fraction and motile microorganism density, the governing partial differential conservation equations are reduced to a set of similarity ordinary differential equations. These equations under prescribed boundary conditions are solved numerically using the Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg fourth-fifth order numerical quadrature in the MAPLE symbolic software. Excellent agreement between the present computations and solutions available in the literature (for special cases) is achieved. The key thermofluid parameters emerging are identified as Reynolds number, wall expansion ratio, Prandtl number, Brownian motion parameter, thermophoresis parameter, Lewis number, bioconvection Lewis number and bioconvection Péclet number. The influence of all these parameters on flow velocity, temperature, nano-particle volume fraction (concentration) and motile micro-organism density function is elaborated. Furthermore graphical solutions are included for skin friction, wall heat transfer rate, nano-particle mass transfer rate and micro-organism transfer rate. Increasing expansion ratio is observed to enhance temperatures and motile micro-organism density. Both nanoparticle volume fraction and microorganism increases with an increase in momentum slip. The dimensionless temperature and microorganism increases as wall expansion increases. Applications of the study arise in advanced nanomechanical bioconvection energy conversion devices, bio-nano-coolant deployment systems etc

Mathematical models for heat and mass transfer in nanofluid flows.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.The behaviour and evolution of most physical phenomena is often best described using mathematical models in the form of systems of ordinary and partial differential equations. A typical example of such phenomena is the flow of a viscous impressible fluid which is described by the Navier-Stokes equations, first derived in the nineteenth century using physical approximations and the principles of mass and momentum conservation. The flow of fluids, and the growth of flow instabilities has been the subject of many investigations because fluids have wide uses in engineering and science, including as carriers of heat, solutes and aggregates. Conventional heat transfer fluids used in engineering applications include air, water and oil. However, each of these fluids has an inherently low thermal conductivity that severely limit heat exchange efficiency. Suspension of nanosized solid particles in traditional heat transfer fluids significantly increases the thermophysical properties of such fluids leading to better heat transfer performance. In this study we present theoretical models to investigate the flow of unsteady nanofluids, heat and mass transport in porous media. Different flow configurations are assumed including an inclined cylinder, a moving surface, a stretching cone and the flow of a polymer nanocomposite modeled as an Oldroyd-B fluid. The nanoparticles assumed include copper, silver and titanium dioxide with water as the base fluid. Most recent boundary-layer nanofluid flow studies assume that the nanoparticle volume fraction can be actively controlled at a bounding solid surface, similar to temperature controls. However, in practice, such controls present significant challenges, and may, in practice, not be possible. In this study the nanoparticle flux at the boundary surface is assumed to be zero. Unsteadiness in fluid flows leads to complex system of partial differential equations. These transport equations are often highly nonlinear and cannot be solved to find exact solutions that describe the evolution of the physical phenomena modeled. A large number of numerical or semi-numerical techniques exist in the literature for finding solutions of nonlinear systems of equations. Some of these methods may, however be subject to certain limitations including slow convergence rates and a small radius of convergence. In recent years, innovative linearization techniques used together with spectral methods have been suggested as suitable tools for solving systems of ordinary and partial differential equations. The techniques which include the spectral local linearization method, spectral relaxation method and the spectral quasiliearization method are used in this study to solve the transport equations, and to determine how the flow characteristics are impacted by changes in certain important physical and fluid parameters. The findings show that these methods give accurate solutions and that the speed of convergence of solutions is comparable with methods such as the Keller-box, Galerkin, and other finite difference or finite element methods. The study gives new insights, and result on the influence of certain events, such as internal heat generation, velocity slip, nanoparticle thermophoresis and random motion on the flow structure, heat and mass transfer rates and the fluid properties in the case of a nanofluid

Mixed convection boundary-layer flow along a vertical surface embedded in a porous medium with a convective boundary condition.

An analysis of the mixed convection boundary-layer flow on one face of a semi-infinite vertical surface embedded in a fluid-saturated porous medium is presented. It is assumed that the other face of the surface is in contact with a hot or cooled fluid maintaining the surface at a constant "temperature Tf

Numerical study of nonlinear heat transfer from a wavy surface to a high permeability medium with pseudo-spectral and smoothed particle methods

Motivated by petro-chemical geological systems, we consider the natural convection boundary layer flow from a vertical isothermal wavy surface adjacent to a saturated non-Darcian high permeability porous medium. High permeability is considered to represent geologically sparsely packed porous media. Both Darcian drag and Forchheimer inertial drag terms are included in the velocity boundary layer equation. A high permeability medium is considered. We employ a sinusoidal relation for the wavy surface. Using a set of transformations, the momentum and heat conservation equations are converted from an (x, y) coordinate system to an (x,η) dimensionless system. The two-point boundary value problem is then solved numerically with a pseudo-spectral method based on combining the Bellman–Kalaba quasi linearization method with the Chebyschev spectral collocation technique (SQLM). The SQLM computations are demonstrated to achieve excellent correlation with smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) Lagrangian solutions. We study the effect of Darcy number (Da), Forchheimer number (Fs), amplitude wavelength (A) and Prandtl number (Pr) on the velocity and temperature distributions in the regime. Local Nusselt number is also computed for selected cases. The study finds important applications in petroleum engineering and also energy systems exploiting porous media and undulating (wavy) surface geometry. The SQLM algorithm is shown to be exceptionally robust and achieves fast convergence and excellent accuracy in nonlinear heat transfer simulations

Pulsating hydromagnetic flow of Au-blood micropolar nanofluid in a channel with Ohmic heating, thermal radiation and heat source/sink

The current work deals with the pulsating flow of Au-blood micropolar nanofluid with the existence of thermal radiation and Joule heating. Micropolar fluid is addressed as blood (base fluid) and Au (gold) as a nanoparticle. The flow has been mathematically modeled, resulting in a delicate system of partial differential equations (PDEs). A perturbation technique is used to convert the PDE system into ordinary differential equations (ODEs), which are subsequently solved by using the shooting method with the Runge–Kutta fourth-order scheme. The effects of various parameters on the velocity, microrotation, temperature, and heat transfer rate of Au-blood nanofluid are graphically depicted and explored successively. The obtained findings bring out that the velocity of nanofluid decreases over a rise in the coupling parameter, magnetic field, and nanoparticle volume fractions. The temperature is reducing with an increment of radiation parameter, frequency parameter, coupling parameter, magnetic field, and volume fraction of nanoparticles. Further, the results show that the Nusselt number against frequency distribution increasing with the rising values of the Eckert number