Enhancement of heat transfer rate in shell & tube heat exchanger using CuO/Al2O3-water based nanofluids

Abstract

It is well known that saving energy is one of the most important concerns of every industry and its utilization or the possible mode/devices for the transferring of it is an important parameter. For chemical industries, heat exchangers are backbone of them. Now a days Nano-fluids along with heat exchanger can be an option to enhance the heat transfer rate. So, Shell and Tube heat exchanger are frequently using by the several industries for heat removal/exchange purposes. These Nano-particles or Nano-fluids help to increase the heat transfer rate by providing large surface area. Using this quality of Nano-fluid along with Shell and Tube heat exchanger is main focus of present work. So, an attempt is made to perform the analysis for quantification of the effects of concentration of nanofluid on the various design parameter of Shell-Tube heat exchanger device i.e., heat transfer characteristic and fluid flow characteristic and also studied the effect of nanofluid concentration on thermal physical properties of Al2O3-water and CuO-water based nanofluid. Results are suggested better heat transfer capabilities of Nano-fluid over normal by doing comparable study for the nanofluid in terms of thermo-physical properties that is thermal conductivity, density and viscosity with base fluid in Shell-Tube heat exchanger. It can suggest easily that nanofluid gives excellent heat transfer coefficient than pure water (base fluid) so the result comes out in the form of reduced area for heat transfer with similar heat exchange capacity. Effect of Nano-particles concentration on the values of Reynolds number (Re) and Prandtl number (Pr) was also observed and it is found that Re and Pr is decreases with increasing value of particle concentration in the base fluid.