DOI: 10.1615/ICHMT.2012.CHT-12
ISBN: 978-1-56700-303-1
ISSN: 2578-5486
NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF NANOFLUID FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER IN A PLATE HEAT EXCHANGER
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a numerical investigation of the flow and heat transfer behavior of two nanofluids, namely CuO-water and Al2O3-water, inside a plate heat exchanger. Both laminar and turbulent flows are studied under steady state conditions. In the turbulent regime the RANS-based Realizable k−ε turbulence model was used. The homogeneous single-phase fluid model was employed to characterize the nanofluids. All fluid properties were considered temperature dependent. The adopted unstructured mesh possesses approximately 9.63×106 elements and was used for both laminar and turbulent flows. Results show that a considerable heat transfer enhancement was achieved using these nanofluids and the energy-based performance comparisons indicate that some of them do represent a more efficient heat transfer medium for this type of application. In general, all nanofluids cause higher pressure losses due to friction compared to that of water.