Unsteady nano-bioconvective channel flow with effect of nth order chemical reaction

Abstract

Nanofluid bioconvective channel flow is an essential aspect of the recent healthcare industry applications, such as biomedical processing systems. Thus, the present work examined the influence of nth order chemical reaction in an unsteady nanofluid bioconvective channel flow in a horizontal microchannel with expanding/contracting walls. The suitable form of the similarity transformation is exercised to transform the governing boundary layer equations into a more straightforward form of system to ease the computation process. The Runge–Kutta method of fifth-order integration technique solved the reduced boundary layer system and generated the numerical results as the governing parameters vary. It is found that the destructive second-order chemical reaction enhances the mass transfer rate at the lower wall but deteriorates the mass transfer rate at the upper wall. The upper channel wall has a better heat transfer rate than the lower wall when the Reynolds number increases.

Keywords

• bioconvection
• boundary layer
• channel flow
• chemical reaction
• nanofluid