Investigation on transport properties, heat transfer characteristics and pressure drop of CuO enhanced R1234yf based refrigerant

Abstract

In refrigeration systems, one of the potential heat transfer fluids is nano-refrigerant. It can boost the performance of air conditioning and vapour compression refrigeration systems. In this investigation, the heat transfer characteristics and pressure drop of CuO/R1234yf are analysed by mathematical and simulation methods. Appropriate mathematical models were adopted from the previous studies to evaluate the heat transfer characteristics and the transport properties of the novel nano-refrigerant. The analysis was carried out with the volume fraction of nano-sized CuO particles in R1234yf refrigerant ranging from 0.2 to 1% and the temperature varying from 0 °C to 65 °C. From the investigation, it is seen that the viscosity, thermal conductivity and density are augmented with nanoparticle inclusion. However, the specific heat capacity of the nano-enhanced refrigerant is diminished with intensify in the nanoparticles’ concentration. The heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of the nano-refrigerant are enhanced by 45.36% and 35.69% respectively. There is a 3.91% average absolute deviation observed between the results obtained from the mathematical and simulation method.