Experimental studies on laminar flow heat transfer in nanofluids flowing through a straight circular tube with and without V-cut twisted tape insert

Abstract

This paper presents experimental studies on the convective heat transfer and friction factor characteristics of flows in a straight circular tube with and without V-cut twisted tapeinserts using Al2O3–Cu/water hybrid nanofluid as working fluid and also comparative studies between Alumina nanofluid and (Cu-Alumina) hybrid nanofluid is conducted. This work is restricted to one type of hybrid nanofluid only. It also does not include the effect of twisted tape dimensions on heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop.Itis observed that the experimental convective heat transfer coefficient increases slightly with an increase in particle volume concentration from 0.1 and 0.4%. The experimental data is in good agreement with the previous models and correlations.The experimental results showed a good enhancement in Nusselt number for Peclet number from 2580 to 11,780 compared to Nusselt number of water, when the copper nanofluid is 0.01% volume concentration and mixed with 0.4% concentration of Alumina nanofluid.Itis also noticed that 0.01% Al2O3–Cu/water hybrid nanofluidhas a higher friction factor than the Al2O3/water nanofluid and base fluid. Since the magnitude of thermal enhancement factor (η) has been observed to be only marginally higher than unity (1.01 to 1.05), the net benefit of inserting V - cut twisted tapes in nanofluids is also nevertheless marginal.