Numerical Prediction of Heat Transfer Characteristics of Nanofluids in a Minichannel Flow

CFD simulation of the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of different nanofluids in a minichannel flow has been explained using FLUENT version 6.3.26. Different nanofluids with nanoparticles of Al2O3, CuO, SiO2, and TiO2 have been used in the simulation process. A comparison of the experimental and computational results has been made for the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics for the case of Al2O3-water nanofluid for the laminar flow. Also, computations have been made by considering Brownian motion as well as without considering Brownian motion of the nanoparticles. After verification of the computational model with the experimental results for Al2O3-water nanofluid, the simulations were performed for the same experimental readings for different nanofluids in the laminar flow regime to find out the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics.

[1]  O. K. Crosser,et al.  Thermal Conductivity of Heterogeneous Two-Component Systems , 1962 .

[2]  Stephen U. S. Choi,et al.  Effects of Various Parameters on Nanofluid Thermal Conductivity , 2007 .

[3]  V. Dhir,et al.  Effect of Brownian Motion on Thermal Conductivity of Nanofluids , 2008 .

[4]  Xing Zhang,et al.  Effective thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of nanofluids containing spherical and cylindrical nanoparticles , 2006 .

[5]  J. Fish,et al.  Role of Brownian motion hydrodynamics on nanofluid thermal conductivity , 2006 .

[6]  J. Koo,et al.  A new thermal conductivity model for nanofluids , 2004 .

[7]  Thirumalachari Sundararajan,et al.  A micro-convection model for thermal conductivity of nanofluids , 2005 .

[8]  M. R. AZIZIANa,et al.  Effect of Nanoconvection due to Brownian Motion on Thermal Conductivity of Nanofluids , 2009 .

[9]  J. Thome,et al.  Nanofluid two-phase flow and thermal physics: a new research frontier of nanotechnology and its challenges. , 2008, Journal of nanoscience and nanotechnology.

[10]  G. Peterson,et al.  Experimental investigation of temperature and volume fraction variations on the effective thermal conductivity of nanoparticle suspensions (nanofluids) , 2006 .

[11]  Y. Xuan,et al.  Investigation on Convective Heat Transfer and Flow Features of Nanofluids , 2003 .

[12]  G. Batchelor.  The effect of Brownian motion on the bulk stress in a suspension of spherical particles , 1977, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[13]  Sarit K. Das,et al.  Model for heat conduction in nanofluids. , 2004, Physical review letters.

[14]  Sarit K. Das,et al.  Heat Transfer in Nanofluids—A Review , 2006 .

[15]  J. Buongiorno.  Convective Transport in Nanofluids , 2006 .

[16]  Stephen U. S. Choi.  Enhancing thermal conductivity of fluids with nano-particles , 1995 .

[17]  A. Mujumdar,et al.  Heat transfer characteristics of nanofluids: a review , 2007 .