XXVIII Congresso UIT sulla Trasmissione del Calore

Brescia, 21-23 Giugno 2010

1. INTRODUCTION
As recent technology has made it possible to produce
nano-sized particles, researchers tried to disperse this size
(determined to be < 100 nm) of particles, instead of millimeter
or micrometer-sized ones, inside conventional heat transfer
fluids such as water, oil, and ethylene glycol. These new class
of fluids are called nanofluids. A nanofluid can be defined as a
fluid in which solid particles with sizes below 100 nm are
suspended stably and dispersed uniformly. The base fluid used
is usually a traditional heat transfer fluid, e.g., water, oil, and
ethylene glycol.
A lot of researchers observed the phenomenon of higher
thermal conductivity of various nanofluids compared to that of
the base fluids. However, there is a main difference between
the results, i.e., some results showed that the increase of
thermal conductivity of nanofluids is an anomaly that cannot
be predicted by the existing conventional model for calculating
the effective thermal conductivity of liquids containing
suspended solid particles [1 - 4] while some others showed that
the increase is not an anomaly and can be predicted by using
the existing model [5, 6]. Thus, the research regarding thermal
conductivity increase of nanofluids needs to be extended until
the physical phenomena responsible for it are known.
It is true that increase in thermal conductivity will improve
the heat transfer behavior of fluid. However, a number of other
variables also play key roles such as in convection heat transfer
cases. Convection heat transfer, beside the thermophysical
properties of the fluid, is also influenced by the velocity of the
flow and by the geometry of the system through which the fluid
is flowing. Hence, the heat transfer performance/behavior of
nanofluids must be tested directly under flow conditions.
Xuan and Li [7] reported that in turbulent forced convection,
the heat transfer coefficient of Cu-water nanofluids flowing
inside a uniformly heated tube remarkably increased. The heat
transfer coefficient increased by around 39% for 2 vol.%
nanoparticle concentration compared to that of water.
Furthermore, it was observed that the increase of nanoparticle
concentration would also increase the heat transfer coefficient.
For the same Reynolds number, the heat transfer coefficient
increase ranged from 6% to 39% with the increase of particle
concentration from 0.5 vol.% to 2 vol.% respectively.
Interestingly, the experimental results showed that, for
nanoparticle volume concentration of 1%, 1.2%, 1.5%, and
2%, no significant increase in pressure drop compared to that
of water. Thus, it is no need to be worried about the drawback
of pumping power increase.
Maiga et al. [8] investigated, numerically, laminar and
turbulent forced convection of water-
2
O
3
and ethylene
glycol-
2
O
3
nanofluids inside a uniformly heated circular
tube. It was found that heat transfer at the tube wall was
enhanced for both laminar and turbulent flow compared to that
of base fluids. The enhancement increased with the increase of
particle loading. However, this also resulted in the increase of
wall shear stress which causes the undesirable increase of
pumping power and contradicts the results of Xuan and Li [7].
The particle volume concentrations used in this numerical
study were 1%, 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, and 10%.
ESTIMATION OF EFFECTIVENESS OF USING NANOFLUIDS FLOWING
INSIDE A CIRCULAR TUBE FOR HEAT TRANSFER APPLICATIONS
Eldwin Djajadiwinata
a
*, Hany al-Ansary
b
, Khalid al-Dakkan
c
, Abdulaziz al-Jariwi
c
a
Graduate Study of Department of Mechanical Engineering, King Saud University, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh 11421,
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, King Saud University, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh 11421,
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
c
National Nanotechnology Center (NNC), King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST),
P. O. Box 6086, Riyadh 11442, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
*
Corresponding author, email address: eldwin_dj@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
This study assesses the heat transfer application of nanofluids, particularly Al
2
O
3
-water, CuO-water, Al
2
O
3
-EG/water mixture
(60:40wt), and CuO-EG/water mixture (60:40wt), flowing turbulently (Re around 5000 to 15000) inside a circular tube. The
h/P)
n
/(h/P)
b
h P
convection heat transfer coefficient and the pumping power, respectivel
base fluids, respectively. It is found that for mass flow rate of 0.1 kg/s and mean bulk temperature of 25C, CuO-water nanofluids
reached maximum and minimum effectiveness of 1.106 at 1.5 vol.% nanoparticles and 1.093 at 3 vol.% nanoparticles,
respectively, while Al
2
O
3
-water nanofluids reached maximum and minimum effectiveness of 1.087 at 2.5 vol.% nanoparticles
and 1.067 at 1% vol. nanoparticles, respectively.
outperforms that of Al
2
O
3
nanofluids. On the other hand, for EG/water mixture based nanofluids, with mass flow rate of 0.3 kg/s
and various mean bulk temperature and particle volume concentration, generally the Al
2
O
3
outperforms that of This paper also shows that heat transfer application of nanofluids mainly depends on their
thermophysical properties and the assessment must be done by observing the ratio between h and P.
Keywords: Nanofluids, copper oxide, alumina, pressure drop, pumping power, convection coefficient