Study on heat transfer enhancement of nanofluid in a new type of heat exchangers

Abstract

As one of the essential equipment in industrial production, improving the efficiency of heat exchangers to slow down energy consumption has become a popular topic. In this paper, the structure of a conventional fixed tube plate heat exchanger is optimized by numerical simulation, replacing the straight tube with a wavy wall tube. The impact of particle size of Cu-water nanofluid on the performance in the new heat exchanger (HEX) is also investigated. The results indicate that using the wavy wall tube enhances the flow field perturbation and improves the working mass’s flow state; adding nanoparticles in water can improve the heat transfer capacity of the fluid. It is also found that the shell process pressure drops (ΔP) and the heat transfer effect of the HEX increased with increasing of the fluid volume flow rate; at the same volume flow rate and the volume fraction of 0.5%, the ΔP of the Cu-water nanofluid in the HEX increases with increasing of the particle size. The heat transfer performance decreases gradually with increasing of the particle size. The smaller particle size of Cu nanoparticles can improve the efficiency of enhanced heat transfer to a larger extent.