Study of natural convection cooling of a nanofluid subjected to a magnetic field

This paper presents a numerical study of natural convection cooling of water-Al2O3 nanofluid by two heat sinks vertically attached to the horizontal walls of a cavity subjected to a magnetic field. The left wall is hot, the right wall is cold, while the horizontal walls are insulated. Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is applied to solve the coupled equations of flow and temperature fields. This study has been carried out for the pertinent parameters in the following ranges: Rayleigh number of the base fluid, Ra=103 to 105, Hartmann number varied from Ha=0 to 60 and the solid volume fraction of nanoparticles between ϕ=0 and 6%. In order to investigate the effect of heat sinks location, three different configurations of heat sinks are considered. The effects of Rayleigh numbers, Hartmann number and heat sinks location on the streamlines, isotherms, Nusselt number are investigated. Results show that the heat transfer rate decreases with the increase of Hartmann number and increases with the rise of Rayleigh number. In addition it is observed that the average Nusselt number increases linearly with the increase of the nanoparticles solid volume fraction. Also, results show that the heat sinks positions greatly influence the heat transfer rate depending on the Hartmann number, Rayleigh number and nanoparticle solid volume fraction. •Lattice Boltzmann method is applied to the problem.•Heat sinks effect is studied.•The effects of Hartmann number, Rayleigh number and solid volume fraction are examined.