A molecular dynamics study of thermal behavior of ammonia/Cu nanorefrigerant flow under different initial pressures and electric fields

Abstract

In today’s world, energy consumption was increased dramatically. This increase in consumption has led to many advances in heat transfer (HT) and phase change (PC) in mechanicalprocesses. This study investigates the thermal conductivity (TC) and PC of Cu-Ammonia nano-refrigerant (NR). This study uses the molecular dynamics (MD) method in an aluminium nanochannel (NC). This simulation examines the effect of external electric field amplitude (EFA) and the initial pressure (IP) on atomic (temperature (T) and density (D) profiles) and thermal properties (TP) of the NR. The kinetic energy (KE) and total energy (TE) are examined to appraise the stability process. The results show that increasing the IP to 5 bar increases the maximum density value to 0.03 atoms/Å3, which indicates an improvement in the sample's atomic properties (AP). The PC particle rate increases with increasing IP from 53 to 59%. Also, increasing the IP decreases PC duration (from 2.96 to 2.89 ns) and increases the TC (0.76 to 0.80 W/m K). On the other hand, by investigating the increase in the applied EFA to the NR from 1 to 5 Å, the maximum density increases from 0.028 to 0.029 atoms/Å3, and the rate of PC particles decreases to 49%. Also, an increase in the EFA causes an increase in the PC duration and a reduction in TC in the sample.