INVESTIGATION OF THERMO-FLUID BEHAVIOUR OF NANOFLUID THROUGH A CORRUGATED TUBE

Abstract

Heat transfer enhancement using nanofluid through a plain tube or corrugated plate has been investigated by many researchers during the last few years. Despite of this improvement, it has not been studied with the justification of using aluminum oxide nanofluid in a corrugated tube in terms of the increased power needed for the flow due to the change in thermophysical properties of nanofluid compared to that of the basefluid. In the present study, the use of nanofluid in a V-shaped corrugated tube for a turbulent flow in order to enhance the heat transfer rate and corresponding pumping power required has been analyzed for Reynolds number- 4000 to 20000. To accomplish heat transfer enhancement, nanofluid requires increased pumping power and the justification of using nanofluid in terms of pumping power is not studied in most of the research articles. So the scope of our present work is to study turbulent forced convection heat transfer and pumping power through a V-shaped corrugated tube subjected to uniform heat flux using Al2O3-water nanofluid. The study is performed for a range of volume fraction 1% to 5% and the diameter of nanoparticle is considered as 50 nm. With an increase of Reynolds number and volume fraction nanofluid provides substantial improvement of heat transfer and reduction of pumping power for optimum volume fraction. For a constant heat transfer coefficient of 10000 W/m2K, the minimum pumping power is obtained for 3% volume fraction of nanofluid flowing through corrugated tube which is 40% lower than that of water.