Natural Convection and Entropy Generation in a Nanofluid Filled Cavity with a Hanged Fin and Heated from the Bottom

Abstract

This paper investigates the Entropy Generation (EG) due to buoyant nanofluid convective flow in a square geometry with a fin. Top wall of the closed space is retained with cold thermal condition (TC), the lower boundary is preserved at a higher temperature (TH), and adiabatic constraints are imposed on the rest of the region, fin is treated as conductive. The model equations are discretized from the finite volume method via a homemade computer code. The study is executed for a vast ranges of Rayleigh number (104 ≤ Ra ≤ 105), nanoparticle concentration (0 ≤ φ ≤ 0.1), location of the fin (h*), thermal conductivity (K), and length of the fin. The impacts of Ra, solid volume fraction, fin size and position, on EG and heat transport (HT) rate have been investigated. The outcomes have shown that the optimal placement of the fin at C* = 0.75 suggests that there is a specific position where the fin creates the most efficient heat transfer, while the minimum Nusselt number at h* = 0.25 indicates that this placement is the least effective for HT. An enhancement in the global Nusselt number was found with the nanoparticle concentrations. Heat transfer could also be improved with an enhancement of the fin length and EG reduces with the increment in the nanoparticle concentration. Finally, it was observed that the heat dissipation rate is enhanced with the nanoparticle concentration.