Hydromagnetic micropolar nanofluid heat and mass transfer in a porous channel with thermophoresis, brownian motion and non-uniform heat source

Abstract

Understanding heat and mass transfer in the flow dynamics of nanofluids within a porous channel has significant applications in various engineering fields, such as groundwater remediation in environmental engineering, enhanced oil recovery in petroleum engineering, and heat exchanger design in system cooling engineering, among others. In light of these applications, the current research focuses on the hydromagnetic flow and heat transfer mechanisms of a non-Newtonian micropolar nanofluid through a porous channel. A mathematical model incorporating the influence of a magnetic field, thermal radiative flux, temperature-dependent thermal conductivity, and a non-uniform heat source is developed with engineered colloidal nanoparticles using the Buongiorno model. The model is transformed into an ordinary differential equation from the initial partial differential equations using appropriate transformations. The resulting model is solved numerically to obtain the solution for the transport phenomena. Several tables are compiled, and graphs are plotted to illustrate the influence of key parameters with real engineering relevance. The investigation revealed that the skin friction coefficient significantly decreased due to the micropolar fluid parameter, while the vortex viscosity term amplified the couple stress profile. Furthermore, the systems thermal energy increased with higher thermophoresis, Brownian motion, and Peclet numbers for heat and mass diffusion. In contrast, the hydrodynamic boundary layer thickness decreased as the strength of the porosity and magnetic field terms increased.