Implementation of nanofluid for heat transfer augmentation and pumping power optimization

Abstract

In this project improvement in heat transfer and pumping power optimization by implementing nanofluid through different fluid domains was investigated numerically. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) based software ANSYS- fluent 12.0 was used to analyze the thermo physical and flow behavior by Finite Volume Method (FVM). The fluid domain was selected as circular pipe, corrugated pipe (including sinusoidal, semicircular, rectangle corrugation) and rough parallel plates for different case studies in order to heat transfer enhancement and pumping power optimization using nanofluid. Turbulent flow for wide range of Reynolds number was considered in this project. Al2O3, TiO2, CuO naofluid with 1%-5% volume fraction in concentration was considered as the base fluid. Constant heat flux was subjected to the pipe and plate wall. Improvement in heat transfer was found out using nanofluid as compared with water due to higher thermal conductivity of nanofluids. Pumping power requirements for nanofluids and pumping power optimization was carried out for particular fluid domain and particular nanofluid with specific volume concentration