Influence of Mass Flow Rate and Concentration of Al2O3 Nanofluid on Thermal Performance of a Double Pipe Heat Exchanger

Abstract

AbstractHeat transfer is a very important process for industrial purposes. While there has been a constant change in the design of heat exchangers over the years which has made it more compact and efficient than ever, the area of modifications in the heat transfer fluid itself has not seen many breakthroughs. Apart from changing the design of the heat exchanger, another method is to use heat carrier fluids which have higher thermal conductivity and heat capacity. Some nanofluids (colloidal solutions of nano-sized particles suspended in a suitable base fluid) of metal oxides show superior thermal properties as compared to water. In this paper, numerical and experimental analyses have been performed to find the improvement in the overall heat transfer coefficient of a double pipe heat exchanger when Al2O3 nanofluid of 0.25% concentration is used of variable mass flow rate. Here Al2O3 nanofluid’s result has been compared with normal water are used to calculate. The overall heat transfer coefficient has been calculated by the measured value of hot and cold fluids inlet–outlet temperatures. First simulation of temperature variation has been observed in ANSYS, and then simulated result has been compared with experimental results. The experimental result shows that the overall heat transfer coefficient increases with the increase of flow rate. At 120 LPH, 240 LPH, and 320 LPH, an improvement of 44.58, 26.37, and 2.78% in the heat transfer coefficient has been observed.KeywordsNanofluidMass flow rateConcentrationThermal performanceHeat exchanger