Heat transfer enhancement with nanofluids in plate heat exchangers: A comprehensive review

Abstract

The application of nanofluids has dramatically increased from the past two decades. Nanofluids have elegantly captivated the attention of researchers nowadays. At present, various papers are being reported dealing with this interesting domain, allied with fascinating applications. However, the nanofluids being captives these days depicts the crucial need to bestow the comprehensive review of nanofluids application in distinct domains. This paper examines the utilization of nanofluids with distinct Plate Heat Exchanger (PHE) geometries. All the reported studies are alienated to two main categories; experimental and numerical. Furthermore, critical information regarding nanoparticle size, base fluids, analytical methods, heat transfer enhancement, flow regime, and pressure drop is presented in a comprehensive table in each section. Also, it was ultimately found that all the studies; analytical, experimental and numerical gave desired and appreciable thermal performance compared to conventional fluids. Author also reported the statistical analysis for the past published papers and the results show the increasing importance of nanofluids application in plate heat exchanger. Most of the studies showed preferred thermal behaviour, heat transfer enhancement, reduction in entropy generation and reduction in exergy destruction compared to the base fluids. An increase in Reynolds number can provide better heat transfer rates. The operating temperature of nanofluids plays a key role in the effectiveness of heat exchanger and heat transfer enhancement. Almost all the studies have demonstrated the preferred nanofluids thermal behaviour in plate heat exchanger, compared to the base fluid but Chevron and Corrugated type geometry of plate heat exchanger gives the appreciable enhancement in Nusselt number.