Experimental investigations of heat transfer and pressure drop on chevron plate heat exchanger using al2o3 water nanofluid

Abstract

Recent research studies on heat transfer enhancement are a process of improving the performance of a heat transfer system So far many researchers made a number of attempts to reduce the size of the heat exchangers and to increase the heat transfer rate The increase of heat transfer coefficient generally increases the heat transfer enhancement The conventional heat transfer fluid has low thermal conductivity that limits the heat transfer performance Suspension of solid particle with base fluid is one of an innovative way to increase the thermal performance in heat exchanger The term nanofluid is a new kind of heat transfer medium with nano particle size of 1100 nm are uniformly and stably distributed in a base fluid which increases the convective heat transfer than traditional heat transfer fluids In this investigation the Al2O3 water nanofluid are taken to study the heat transfer characteristics and pressure drop on plate heat exchanger The required Al2O3 water nanofluid is prepared for 0125 0 25 0 375 and 0 5 volume concentration using aluminium oxide and deionized water by two step method The dry aluminium oxide particles have been characterized by using X ray diffraction XRD and Scanning Electron Microscope SEM The average size of aluminum oxide is in between 45 50 nm and the particles are uniformly dispersed in base fluid The thermal conductivity and viscosity of the prepared Al2O3 water nanofluid was measured by using KD2 Pro thermal property analyzer and Brookfield Viscosity respectively The thermal conductivity and viscosity increases with increasing particle volume concentration for all four samples The stability of nanofluid has been studied by using UV visible spectrophotometer newline