They reported that on higher Rayleigh numbers, the heat transfer rate increases on the dispersion of very small quantity of nanoparticles in water, but a larger quantity of nanoparticles Batimastat solubility dmso in water decreases

the heat transfer rates. The natural convection of nanofluids past vertical plate under different conditions has been studied by Hamad and Pope [21] and Rana and Bhargava [22]. They reported that the Nusselt number as well as the skin friction coefficient both increase with the increase in nanoparticle concentration in the base fluid. Zoubida et al. [23] investigated the effects of thermophoresis and Brownian motion significant in selleck kinase inhibitor nanofluid heat transfer enhancement and found an enhancement in heat transfer at any volume fraction of nanoparticles. They also

reported that the enhancement is more pronounced at low volume fraction of nanoparticles and that the heat transfer decreases by increasing the nanoparticle volume fraction. The dispersion of nano-sized particles in the traditional fluid increased the thermal conductivity of the fluid, and the presence of porous media enhances the effective thermal conductivity of the base fluid. Thus, the use of nanofluids in porous media would be very much helpful in heat transfer selleck chemicals llc enhancement. So far, very few studies have been done for the natural convection of nanofluids in porous media. Nield and Kuznetsov [24] studied the Cheng-Minkowycz problem for natural convection boundary layer flow in a porous medium saturated by a nanofluid. In the modeling of the problem, they used nanofluids by incorporating the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. For the porous medium,

the Darcy model was taken. Aziz et al. [25] found the numerical solution for the free convection boundary layer flow past a horizontal flat plate embedded in porous medium filled by nanofluid containing gyrotactic microorganisms. Recently, Rana et al. [26] found the numerical solution before for steady-mixed convection boundary layer flow of a nanofluid along an inclined plate embedded in a porous medium. In the studies of natural convection of nanofluids in porous media, the authors did the parametric study only. However, they did not account any effect of parameters influencing the thermal conductivity and dynamic viscosity, such as particle concentration, particle size, temperature, nature of base fluid, and the nature of nanoparticle, which satisfy the experimental data for the thermal conductivity and dynamic viscosity of the nanofluids. In the best knowledge of the authors of this article, no such study has been done with regard to the natural convection of nanofluids in porous media. It is known that heat transfer in a fluid depends upon the temperature difference in fluid and heated surface and the thermophysical properties of the fluid.