ABSTRACT

The heat exchangers are most widely used in industrial applications and different
techniques are used to increases the effecitivenss of the heat exchangers. The addition of
nanoparticles increases the effectiveness of the heat exchanges. Hence in this work, we have
used aluminium oxide (AL2O3) as the nanoparticles and studied its effect of the effectiveness of
the heat exchangers. A shell and tube heat exchanger was developed successfully and a series of
experiments were conducted to study the effect of AL2O3 nanoparticles on the performance of
the double pipe and shell and tube heat exchangers with three different concentrations of nano
particles such as 0.5 ,1 and 1.5 percentage and different flow rates . From the experimental
results we observed that the nano particle dosage affects the effectiveness of the heat exchangers. The
nano particle dosage of 1.5 % results in higher effectiveness. However the difference between
effectiveness of 1 and 1.5 % is small. The AL2O3 dosage of 1 % is recommended considering the cost of
the nano particle and erosion problems with higher dosage of nano particle.