Thermal Transport Characteristics of Non-Newtonian Electroosmotic Flow in a Slit Microchannel

Electroosmosis has many applications in fluid delivery at microscale, sample collection, detection, mixing and separation of various biological and chemical species. In biological applications, most fluids are known to be non-Newtonian. Therefore, the study of thermal features of non-Newtonian electroosmotic flow is of great importance for scientific communities. In the present work, the fully developed electroosmotic flow of power-law fluids in a slit microchannel is investigated. The related equations are transformed into non-dimensional forms and necessary changes are made to adapt them for non-Newtonian fluids of power-law model. Results show that depending on different flow parameters like Debye-Hu¨ckel or related viscous dissipation and Joule heating parameters, non-Newtonian characteristics of the flow may lead to significant deviations from Newtonian flow behaviors.