Heat Transfer Simulation for 3D MHD Rotating Hybrid NanoFluid Flow Between Parallel Plates in Parabolic Trough Solar Collector: A Numerical Study

Abstract: Solar thermal collectors disperse and collect the solar radiation with its further conversion into thermal energy through solar thermal concentrating systems, which frequently use nanofluids as a heat transporter. The present research makes emphasis on the analysis of the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) of flow of hybrid nanofluid (HNF) and conventional nanofluid (CNF) between two rotating plates. The flow is induced by an exponentially stretching sheet in a parabolic trough solar collector (PTSC). Owing to a similarity transformation, partial differential equations with boundary constraints were converted to a simpler case of nonlinear ordinary-differential formulas. The Keller-box process is introduced for finding an approximate solution of the ordinary reduced differential equations. Hybrid nanofluid, which consists of two kinds of nanoparticles, copper (Cu) and aluminium (Al) with Newtonian water (H₂O) base fluid, is considered. The key idea of this article is to scrutinize the impact of variation of significant parameters on the velocity, temperature, and heat transport rate for Al–H₂O nanofluid and Cu–Al/H₂O hybrid nanofluid. The results evidence that the hybrid nanofluid (Cu–Al/H₂O) has a lower friction factor and higher heat transmission rate as compared with the conventional nanofluid (Al–H₂O). Furthermore, the rotation parameter decelerates the heat transport rate. To visualize the fluid flow, streamlines are drawn for different values of the suction/injection parameter.