In this study, the effect of mixed convection flow in a lid-driven porous cavity using different nanoparticles, such as aluminum oxide (Al 2 O 3), copper (Cu), silver (Ag), and titanium dioxide (TiO 2), are investigated. The base fluid is considered as water. The transport equations are solved numerically by finite volume method on a co-located grid arrangement using quadratic upwind interpolation for convective kinematics (QUICK) scheme. A two-dimensional square cavity is considered for the present investigation whose horizontal walls are insulated. The cold left wall is moving up and hot right wall is moving down with equal velocities. The variations of temperature distribution, stream function, and Nusselt number (Nu) are analyzed at constant Grashof numbers (Gr), Richardson numbers (Ri), and Darcy numbers (Da) as 1 × 10 4, 100, and 0.1, respectively, for different nanoparticles. The present results are validated by favorable comparison with previously published literature. The predicted results clearly indicate that the presence of nanoparticles inside the porous media enhances the heat transfer significantly. It is observed from the numerical results that the average Nusselt numbers (Nu) were found to increase linearly with an increase in volume fraction (χ). For the given volume fraction, the average Nu is maximum for a silver-based nanoparticle. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.