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This paper investigates the natural convection inside a partially layered porous cavity with a heated wavy solid wall; the geometry is encountered in compact heat exchangers. Alumina nanoparticles are included in the water to enhance the heat exchange process. The incidental entropy generation is also studied to evaluate the thermodynamic irreversibility. The nanofluid flow is taken as laminar and incompressible while the advection inertia effect in the porous layer is taken into account by adopting the Darcy–Forchheimer model. The problem is explained in the dimensionless form of the governing equations and solved by the finite element method. The Darcy number (Da), porosity of the porous layer (ε ), number of undulations (N), and the nanoparticles volume fraction (ϕ ) are varied to assess the heat transfer and the incidental entropy generation. It is found that the waviness of the solid wall augments the average Nusselt number and minimizes the generation of entropy. The results show for some circumstances that the Nusselt number is augmented by 43.8% when N is raised from 0 (flat solid wall) to 4. It is also found that the porosity of the porous layer is a more crucial parameter than its permeability, where a 37.4% enhancement in the Nusselt number is achieved when the porosity is raised from 0.2 to 0.8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]