Investigation of heat transfer performance of alumina nanofluid flowing in the horizontal tube using fuzzy logic rules

Abstract

ABSTRACT For the prediction of the heat transfer coefficient (HTC) of water-alumina nanofluid, the fuzzy theory was implemented in the current investigation. For the experimental setup validation, the HTC of water acquired from the experiments at varying pressure was validated with the HTC acquired from the correlation of Chen. Experiments were performed for water-alumina nanofluid at pressure (1–2 bar), mass flux (676–1,014 kg m−2 s−1), volumetric concentration (0.05–0.15%), and heat flux (94–143 kW m−2). Increment in the HTC of water-alumina nanofluid was noticed with the increment in the pressure, mass flux, concentration, and heat flux. Highest HTC of water-alumina nanofluid was 81.08 kW m−2 K−1 noticed at mass flux 1,014 kg m−2 s−1, concentration 0.15%, pressure 2 bar, and heat flux 143 kW m−2. The lowest HTC of water-alumina nanofluid was 21.94 kW m−2 K−1 noticed at mass flux 676 kg m−2 s−1, concentration 0.05%, pressure 1 bar, and heat flux 94 kW m−2. The interaction plots showed the influence of pressure, mass flux, concentration, and heat flux on the HTC of water-alumina nanofluid. The signal-to-noise ratio was employed to study the thermal performance characteristics for the flow boiling of water-alumina nanofluid. Ross, Roy, and Kumar formula was used for predicting the HTC of alumina nanofluid, and there was an error of 10.96% among the predicted and the experimental HTC. The fuzzy logic system showed a fine performance as the average error among the predicted and experimental HTC of water-alumina nanofluid was 0.29%.