Fully developed electro-osmotic heat transfer in microchannels

Thermally fully developed, electro-osmotically generated convective transport has been analyzed for a parallel plate microchannel and circular microtube under imposed constant wall heat flux and constant wall temperature boundary conditions. Such a flow is established not by an imposed pressure gradient, but by a voltage potential gradient along the length of the tube. The result is a combination of unique electro-osmotic velocity profiles and volumetric heating in the fluid due to the imposed voltage gradient. The exact solution for the fully developed, dimensionless temperature profile and corresponding Nusselt number have been determined analytically for both geometries and both thermal boundary conditions. The fully developed temperature profiles and Nusselt number are found to depend on the relative duct radius (ratio of the Debye length to duct radius or plate gap half-width) and the magnitude of the dimensionless volumetric source. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.