Combined Effect of Magnetic Field and Nanofluid Variable Properties on Heat Transfer Enhancement in Natural Convection

Abstract

The current work investigated, numerically, enhancement of heat transfer in natural convection using CuO-water nanofluid in the presence of a magnetic field. The governing equations were discretized using the control volume method and solved numerically via the SIMPLE algorithm. For the case of absence of a magnetic field and for low Rayleigh number, the heat transfer was almost insensitive to the presence of nanoparticles. For moderate and high Rayleigh numbers, the presence of nanoparticles had an adverse effect on heat transfer at high volume fraction of nanoparticles. The highest reduction in heat transfer was registered for the case of Ra = 10⁵. Contour maps are generated for the normalized Nusselt number (Nu*) to determine the optimum selection of volume fraction of nanoparticles and magnetic field that gives maximum heat transfer enhancement. The results demonstrated the effectiveness and practicality of using high values of magnetic field in enhancing heat transfer using nanofluids.