THERMAL AND SOLUTAL ANALYSIS OF A TERNARY HYBRID NANOFLUID FLOW IN A POROUS CHANNEL: A FRACTAL–FRACTIONAL MODEL

Abstract

Enhancing the heat and mass transfer performance of working fluids remains a critical challenge to pursue sustainable and energy-efficient technologies. Although regular working fluids have superior thermo-physical properties to pure base fluids, they often face limitations that hinder their adoption in multifunctional applications. To overcome these challenges, this study develops a novel, comprehensive and physically consistent mathematical model for an unsteady, electrically conducting ternary hybrid nanofluid composed of graphene oxide (GO), cerium oxide (CeO[Formula: see text], and hexagonal boron nitride ([Formula: see text]-BN) suspended in an environmentally friendly ionic liquid (Ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate) [EMIM][BF 4 ]. The model integrates magnetic effects, radiation heat transfer, viscous dissipation, Joule heating, and coupled thermo-diffusion effects. A fractal–fractional derivative operator is employed to generalize the governing equations, while the local radial basis functions (RBF) scheme is used to solve them numerically. Computational and graphical results reveal that CeO 2 suppresses the fluid velocity due to increased inertial resistance, while the dispersion of [Formula: see text]-BN significantly enhanced the thermal profile, resulting in a higher Nusselt number. Furthermore, higher values of Dufour and Soret numbers enhance the coupled heat and mass transfer rates, indicating the model’s potential to design advanced heat exchangers and smart cooling devices. These findings provide valuable guidelines for designing compact heat exchangers and thermal energy storage systems for applications in renewable energy and microelectronics cooling.