Enhanced heat transport in partitioned thermal convection

Enhancing heat transport across a fluid layer is of fundamental interest as well as of great technological importance. For decades, Rayleigh-B\'{e}nard convection, i.e. the motion of a fluid layer that is heated from below and cooled from above, has been a paradigm for the study of convective heat transport, and how to improve its overall heat-transfer efficiency is still an open question. Here we report an experimental and numerical study that reveals a novel mechanism that leads to dramatically enhanced heat transport. When vertical partitions are inserted into a convection cell with thin gaps left open between partition walls and the cooling/heating plates, it is found that the convective flow becomes much more coherent and self-organized, leading to a dramatically enhanced heat transport of up to 2.3 times that without any partitions. We expect that this surprising effect will lead to broad applications.