A mathematical study of boundary layer nanofluid flow using spectral quasilinearization methods.

Abstract

Heat and mass transfer enhancement in industrial processes is critical in improving the efficiency of these systems. Several studies have been conducted in the past to investigate different strategies for improving heat and mass transfer enhancement. There are however some aspects that warrant further investigations. These emanate from different constitutive relationships for different non-Newtonian fluids and numerical instability of some numerical schemes. To investigate the convective transport phenomena in nanofluid flows, we formulate models for flows with convective boundary conditions and solve them numerically using the spectral quasilinearisation methods. The numerical methods are shown to be stable, accurate and have fast convergence rates. The convective transport phenomena are studied via parameters such as the Biot number and buoyancy parameter. These are shown to enhance convective transport. Nanoparticles and microorganisms’ effects are studied via parameters such as the Brownian motion, thermophoresis, bioconvective Peclet number, bioconvective Schmidt number and bioconvective Rayleigh number. These are also shown to aid convective transport.