Second law analysis for nonlinear convective flow of a reactive couple stress fluid through a vertical channel

Heliyon. 2018 Nov 8;4(11):e00907. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00907. eCollection 2018 Nov.

Abstract

The present article investigates the entropy generation rate in the nonlinear convective flow of a reactive couple stress liquid through a channel filled with saturated materials and subjected to convective cooling. Analytical solutions of the coupled nonlinear boundary-value problems arising from the mathematical formulation are obtained by using the Homotopy Analysis Method (HAM). The analytical solutions are further validated numerically with the fourth order Runge-Kutta (RK4) to establish the accuracy of the method. Velocity, temperature, entropy generation, and heat irreversibility ratio profiles are presented and discussed extensively. The result of the computation shows that entropy generation increases significantly with increasing buoyancy parameter.

Keywords: Applied mathematics; Computational mathematics; Thermodynamics.