Non-Darcy nanoliquid buoyant flow and entropy generation analysis in an inclined porous annulus: Effect of source-sink arrangement

Abstract

In several engineering and industrial applications, the primary challenge in the design of thermal devices is to minimize the entropy production with maximum energy dissipation so that the system efficiency could be enhanced. In particular, an inclined partially heated annulus is far challenging due to the presence of both tangential and normal gravity components, which produces major impacts on the fluid movement and associated transport rates as well as entropy production. From several important applications point of view, the current investigation is mainly focused to address the combined impacts of source-sink arrangements as well as the annular inclination on buoyant nanoliquid motion, thermal dissipation along with irreversibility distribution in a tilted porous annulus. The governing model equations are numerically solved by utilizing the finite difference based time-splitting and relaxation techniques. Using second-order finite difference approximation, the partial derivatives are approximated and the resulting system of algebraic equations are inverted using Thomas algorithm. The influence of various controlling parameters such as geometric inclination angle, nanoparticle shape, Darcy number, length and position of source-sink on fluid movement, thermal and entropy distribution are scrutinized in detail. Through a wide range of numerical experiments, it has been found that the annular inclination angle and location of source-sink arrangement plays a vital role on fluidity and flow patterns of nanoliquid in the porous saturated annulus. For smaller size of source-sink pair, higher thermal dissipation with minimal entropy production could be achieved, which is an important observation for the design of thermally efficient systems. We have also noticed that a better thermal transport rate with minimum irreversibility rate could be attained for a particular source-sink arrangement, in particular for γ=0∘, the staggered positioning of source-sink pair is beneficial rather than in-line arrangement. Among the various parameters arising in this analysis, the nanoparticle shape has been one of the key parameters to test the thermal efficiency. It has been predicted that the blade shaped nanoparticle induces better thermal efficiency, among the five different shapes of nanoparticle. The outcomes of this analysis could be utilized in applications, such as solar systems, electronic equipment cooling and heat exchangers.