Heat and Mass Transfer Flow of Gyrotactic Microorganisms and Nanoparticles through a Porous Medium

Abstract

The insertion of microorganisms (microbes) in commonly used nanofluids is helpful to enhance the thermal efficiency in many systems such as bio-microsystems like chip-shaped microdevices, microbial fuel cells, enzyme biosensor and microfluidics devices like micro-volumes and bacteria powered micro-mixers. The utilization of porous media is another way to enhance the thermal efficiency. Our concern in this article is to numerically investigate the heat and mass transfer flow of gyrotactic microorganisms and nanofluids with allowance for chemical reaction and heat generation through a porous medium past a nonlinear stretching sheet. The fully coupled nonlinear system of equations is solved by employing the SOR (Successive over Relaxation) method. The repercussions of preeminent parameters on the flow, heat and mass transfer as well as microorganisms diffusion rate are deliberated and shown through graphs and tables. The culminations evidently disclose that the bioconvection Peclet number and the motile microbes parameter enhance the density of the motile microorganisms. It is also found that porous medium has negligible effect on motile microbes’ concentration while it significantly enhances the shear stress.