Bioconvection nanofluid flow through vertical rigid parallel plates with the application of Arrhenius kinetics: a numerical study

Abstract

The flow of nanofluid bioconvection through a pair of vertical parallel plates in the presence of activation energy is investigated in this article. Motile microorganisms were added to induce bioconvection inside the non-Newtonian fluid to create a mixing-like phenomenon in the system. The gyrotactic microorganisms are one type of these microorganisms that move according to torques induced by gravitational and viscous forces in the system. The derived controlling set of partial differential equations (PDEs) is transformed into dimensionless ordinary differential Equations (ODEs) employing dimensionless parameters. The resulting nonlinear coupled differential equations with dimensionless boundary conditions are solved on computational software Matlab using bvp4c solver. Graphs demonstrate the physical importance of several evolving parameters on velocity distribution, nanoparticle concentration, temperature distribution, and motile microbe profile. Tables provide the numerical values of the skin friction coefficient, local Nusselt number, local Sherwood number, and motile density number. A numerical comparison with previous research is also performed to confirm that the reported results are accurate and legitimate.