Rotary kilns have been widely employed in various industrial uses, especially the cement production. This article deals with enhancing the thermal performance of a rotary kiln duct with V-shaped grooves mounted on the outer wall. Four V-shaped grooves with different depths h/D ranging from 0.1 to 0.4 were designed. The Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes equations (RANS) of two-dimensional steady-state flow are used to model the governing flow equations by using the finite volume approach (FVM) in FLUENT. k-ε standard, k-ε Realizable, k-ω SST and k-ε RNG turbulence models of the RANS approach and the k-ω SST model has been adopted to validate CFD results. In this study, the numerical results have revealed that the increase in groove depth decrease the temperature of the rotary kiln’s outer wall than the smooth walls and gives the largest Nu number, especially for the groove with h/D =0.3 and 0.4 depths.