  The feasibility of using a thermomagnetically pumped ferrofluid to enhance
the performance of a natural convection cooling loop is investigated. First, a
simplified analytical estimate for the thermomagnetic pumping action is
derived, and then design rules for optimal solenoid and ferrofluid are
presented. The design rules are used to set up a medium-scale (1 m, 10-1000 W)
case study, which is modeled using a previously published and validated model
(Aursand et al. [1]). The results show that the thermomagnetic driving force is
significant compared to the natural convection driving force, and may in some
cases greatly surpass it. The results also indicate that cooling performance
can be increased by factors up to 4 and 2 in the single-phase and two- phase
regimes, respectively, even when taking into the account the added heat from
the solenoid. The performance increases can alternatively be used to obtain a
reduction in heat-sink size by up to 75 %.
