Highly conductive porous foams and nanofluids are efficient materials for enhancing heat transfer. This paper presents a numerical investigation of convective heat transfer of a nanofluid in porous foams using a lattice Boltzmann (LB) method. We model the nonequilibrium thermal transport of nanofluid and solid phases by considering the thermal conductivity difference of the nanofluid and the metal foam. Flow and heat transfer characteristics of nanofluids in metal foams are analyzed based on velocity and temperature fields. Effects of key parameters on flow and thermal performances are discussed. An entropy generation analysis is conducted for nanofluid convection in porous media. Results show that Nusselt number increases with a decrease in porosity and an increase in Reynolds number (Re), Darcy number (Da), thermal conductivities of nanoparticles and solid ligaments, and nanoparticle volume fraction. The performance evaluation criterion (PEC) is sensitive to Re in the range Re ≤ 600. This work provides a numerical procedure for the treatment of flow/thermal transport of nanofluids in porous media under the local thermal nonequilibrium (LTNE) condition.
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Xu et al. (2019) studied this question.