Forced Convection Heat Transfer of Zirconia-water Nanofluid in Vertical Triangular Sub-channel

Abstract

Recently, the researchers in nuclear technology are thinking about the use of nanofluid as an alternative cooler, besides using the base-fluids or water and gas. The idea of using nanofluid is already being considered to be applied in nuclear power plants in the future. This nanofluid is expected to be applied in cooling systems, both primary cooling systems and emergency core cooling systems. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the characteristics of the thermo-physical properties of ZrO2-water nanofluid in the forced convection flow. Recent studies showed that ZrO2-water nanofluid has a good prospect to be used in the nuclear reactor technology due to its low neutron absorption cross section. Although several papers have reported the physical properties of ZrO2-water nanofluid, practically there is no correlation equation for predicting forced convection heat transfer in a vertical triangular sub-channel in ZrO2-water nanofluid. This experiment used ZrO2–water nanofluid at a constant nanofluid concentration of 0.10 wt.%. The results showed that the average increase in ZrO2-water nanofluid heat transfer coefficient was greater than 20% compared to the base-fluids or water heat transfer coefficient as coolant. It is expected that this nanofluid will support the current trend especially in cooling system applications.