Hybrid-nanofluid Flow through Partially Porous Wavy Channels: Thermo-hydraulic Performance and Entropy Analysis

Abstract

Comprehensive numerical simulations are made to examine the combined effect of three distinct passive techniques: partial porous insert, corrugated walls, and hybrid nanofluid on thermo-hydraulic properties and entropy generation of three different wavy channels (triangular, sinusoidal, and trapezoidal) for the first time. The finite element method is used, and the simulations are performed considering Ag-TiO₂-Water hybrid nanofluid (0 to 4%) as a coolant for Reynolds number range from 5 to 500 and Darcy number, 10⁻⁶. The present study will be helpful in designing and establishing a viable heat exchanging device from both the first law and second law of thermodynamics perspectives with maximum performance. It is demonstrated that the insertion of porous media between the corrugated walls enhances the thermal performance with simultaneous increment in pressure losses. It is observed that the trapezoidal channel is founded to be viable with a performance factor higher than 1 for a given range of Reynolds number, unlike the other two channels, which are viable only for higher Reynolds number. Therefore, the trapezoidal channel performs best with maximum enhancement in thermal performance by 90%. Also, from entropy generation analysis, it is shown that all three channels are thermodynamically advantageous from a second law perspective but only for low values of Reynolds number.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Prince Kumar

Prince Kumar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jorhat engineering college, Assam, India. He carried out his masters from National Institute of Technology Silchar and is now pursuing PhD from the same institute. His research work comprises modeling, and simulation tasks with research interest include computational fluid dynamics, hybrid nanofluid flow, porous media flow, corrugated channel flow, and non-Newtonian fluid flow.

Ritesh Dwivedi

Ritesh Dwivedi is a PhD Research Scholar in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (ISM) Dhanbad. He has obtained his postgraduate in Thermal Engineering from National Institute of Technology Silchar. His research interest includes heat transfer in microchannels and nanofluids.

Krishna Murari Pandey

Krishana Murari Pandey received his B.Tech from IIT Varanasi in 1980, M.Tech in Heat Power in 1987 from the same institute. He obtained the PhD degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1994. He has served at National Institute of Technology Silchar as Lecturer from 1987 to March 1991 then as Assistant/Associate Professor from March 1991 to May 2006 and as Professor from May 2006 till date. He has published several articles in the reputed journals related to heat and mass transfer, combustion, and computational fluid dynamics.