Purpose Laminar natural convection of nanofluids in a square cooled cavity enclosing a heated horizontal cylinder is studied numerically. This paper aims to investigate in what measure the nanoparticle size and average volume fraction, the cavity width, the cylinder diameter and position, the average temperature of the nanofluid and the temperature difference imposed between the cylinder and the cavity walls, affects the basic heat and fluid flow features, as well as the thermal performance of the nanofluid relative to that of the base liquid. Design/methodology/approach The four-equation system of the mass, momentum and energy transfer governing equations has been solved using a computational code incorporating three empirical correlations for the evaluation of the effective thermal conductivity, the effective dynamic viscosity and the coefficient of thermophoretic diffusion, all based on a high number of experimental data available in the literature. The SIMPLE-C algorithm has been used to handle the pressure-velocity coupling. Simulations have been performed using Al2O3 + H2O, for different values of the average volume fraction of the suspended solid phase in the range 0-0.04, the diameter of the nanoparticles in the range 25-75 nm, the temperature difference imposed between the cylinder and the cavity walls in the range 5-20 K, the average nanofluid temperature in the range 300-330 K, the ratio between the cylinder diameter and the cavity width in the range 0.1-0.5 m, the ratio between the distance of the cylinder axis from the bottom wall and the cavity width in the range 0.2-0.8 and the ratio between the distance of the cylinder axis from the left sidewall and the cavity width in the range 0.2-0.5. Findings The main results obtained may be summarized as follows: the overall solid phase migration from hot to cold results in a cooperating solutal buoyancy force which tends to compensate the friction increase consequent to the viscosity growth due to the dispersion of the nanoparticles into the base fluid; the effect of the increased thermal conductivity consequent to the nanoparticle dispersion into the base fluid plays the major role in determining the heat transfer enhancement of the nanofluid, at least in the upper range of the investigated average temperatures; at high temperatures, the nanofluid heat transfer performance relative to that of the pure base liquid increases with increasing the average volume fraction of the suspended solid phase, whereas at low temperatures, it has a peak at an optimal particle loading; the relative heat transfer performance of the nanofluid increases notably with increasing the average temperature, and just moderately as the imposed temperature difference, the width of the cavity and the distance of the cylinder from the bottom of the cavity, are increased; the relative heat transfer performance of the nanofluid increases as the nanoparticle size, the cylinder diameter and the distance of the cylinder from the sidewall, are decreased; as a consequence of the local competition between the thermal and the solutal buoyancy forces, a periodic flow arises when the cylinder is located in the vicinity of one of the cooled walls of the enclosure. Originality/value Framed in this general background, a comprehensive numerical study on buoyancy-driven convection of alumina-water nanofluids inside a cooled square cavity containing a heated circular cylinder is executed by the way of a two-phase model based on the double-diffusive approach accounting for the effects of the Brownian diffusion and thermophoresis.
