Analysis on Al2O3/water nanofluid flow in a channel by inserting corrugated/perforated fins for solar heating heat exchangers

Abstract

Improving the efficiency is a crucial issue to introduce renewable energy as a commercial success. In the current experimental study, the hydrothermal performance of corrugated/perforated fins (CPFs) is investigation for use in plate heat exchangers as heat exchange devise in the active solar heating system. Water and Al2O3/water nanofluid (NF) are applied as working fluid. The considered factors are waviness aspect ratio, perforation diameter, nanoparticle concentration, and flow rate. Investigation of these factors leads to the implementation of more than 250 experiments. The results of studied factors show that the heat transfer coefficient of CPFs is more than that of typical ones, while the pressure drop of CPFs is lower. The optimal geometry of CPFs is obtained by using a hydrothermal performance factor. The maximum performance factor of 1.95 is recorded for the CPF with the waviness aspect ratio of 0.51 and perforation diameter of 6 mm at the flow rate of 0.117 × 10−3 m3/s. Finally, higher values of heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop are detected for Al2O3/water NFs compared to the base fluid. At the studied ranges, the maximum augmentations of 14.1% and 9.5% are detected, respectively, for heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of 0.3 wt% NF flow.