A numerical study on the performance of water based copper oxide

nanofluids in compact channel

Raushan Kumar Das, Gurpreet Singh Sokhal, Satbir Singh Sehgal

• The geometry of the pipe is compact pipe which is used in the various types of compact heat exchanger. The
inner diameter is 5 mm and outer diameter is 5.3 mm. The width of the circular pipe 200 mm. The flow is
turbulent flow

• The air velocity over the pipe and ambient temperature were to be assumed steady
• The different conditions of simulation with range of different parameter are used in this study is in this given
Table 1.

• Thermophysical Properties
1. Specific heat

2. Thermal conductivity

3. Density

4. viscosity

• . The thermal physical properties are estimated for 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5% nanoparticles concentrations at
fluid temperature ranges from 35 °C to 50 °C.
Computational Assessment of Nano-Particulate (Al2O3/Water) Utilization for
Enhancement of Heat Transfer with varying straight section lengths in a Serpentine Tube
Heat Exchanger
M. Awais, M. Saad, Hamza Ayaz, M.M. Ehsan, Arafat A. Bhuiyan

• Transport properties of Al2O3/water-based nano-fluid was investigated by incorporating developed

models for thermal conductivity, density, viscosity and specific heat capacity
• Nano-fluid is treated as homogenous mixture of nanoparticles and base fluid i.e. impact of Brownian
motion phenomena, nanoparticles size and shape, thermophoresis etc. have not been considered.
• To examine thermal conductivity of Nano-fluid Maxwell thermal conductivity model [36] was used as
depicted in Eqn (1) which is primarily function of nanoparticles concentration i.e. small variation in
particle loading possess the tendency of increasing and decreasing thermal conductivity of Nano-fluid.

Figure 2: Influence of volumetric concentration of nanoparticles for Al2O3/water Nano-fluid on (a). Thermal
conductivity, (b). Viscosity.
• To couple the pressure and velocity SIMPLEC algorithm was employed
• The standard initialization method was used for initializing the solution
• These analyses were carried out to acquire temperature distribution, velocity field, heat transfer coefficients and
pressure drop for STHX for different volumetric flow rates (Re-number) and volume fraction of nanoparticles of
nanofluid
• The mathematical model used in this numerical process rely on following assumptions
1. Steady state process was adopted.
2. Exclusion of both radiative and gravitational effects was considered.
3. Nano-fluid was considered Newtonian and incompressible.
• K-ε Turbulence Model is the industry standard two equation turbulence model. k is the turbulence kinetic energy
as is defined as the variance of the fluctuations in velocity.
• All serpentine tubes have the same tube diameter (7mm), tube pitch (25mm), tube length (1100mm) and tube
thickness (1mm).
Numerical study of fluid dynamic and heat transfer performance of Al2O3 and CuO
nanofluids in the flat tubes of a radiator
Ravikanth S. Vajjha, Debendra K. Das *, Praveen K. Namburu

• As described by Frass (1989), the aerodynamically shaped, flattened tubes give close
to the best performance obtainable. When compared with a circular tube, the flat
tube has a relatively smaller pressure drop on the air side with the increased heat
transfer area.

• The coolant inside an automobile radiator, generally 60% ethylene glycol and 40%
water by mass (60:40 EG/W) in cold climates, can be taken as incompressible

• A first-order upwind scheme was employed to descretize the convection terms,

diffusion terms, and other quantities resulting from the governing equations.

• The pressure–velocity coupling was handled with the semi implicit method for
pressure linked equations

• We solved for the three velocity components VX, VY, VZ, the pressure P, and the
temperature T throughout the interior computational domain of the flat tube.

Boundary Conditions

• The inlet velocity determines the Reynolds number of the flow, and the inlet
temperature has been taken as 90 °C (363 K), which is typical for automotive
radiators

• At the outlet section of the tube, an outflow boundary condition is adopted when
the thermal entry length XT= 0.05Re PrDh is less than the length of the tube. In
Fluent (2005), the outflow boundary condition corresponds to fully developed
velocity and temperature profiles, so that the axial derivatives of the velocity and the
temperature at the exit plane are zero.

• For a higher Reynolds number, the flow is not full developed. Under such a
condition, a pressure outlet boundary condition is adopted.

• For an automobile radiator, a realistic thermal boundary condition on the outside of

the wall is a prescribed convective heat transfer coefficient ho on the air side and a
fixed free stream temperature.
 • In our simulations, following Park and Pak (2002), ho =50W/m2 K and an ambient air
temperature of 30 °C (303 K) were selected. This ho represents a mean vehicle speed
between the idle and the full speed of 72 km/h.

Thermophysical Properties

• Namburu et al. (2007) measured the viscosity of an Al2O3 nanoparticle suspension of

particle volumetric concentration up to 10% in 60:40 EG/W base fluid within a temperature
range of 35 °Cto 50 °C. From their experimental data they proposed an empirical correlation

• From the measurements of Al2O3 and CuO nanofluids, a thermal conductivity correlation
was developed by Vajjha and Das (2009) following the model of Koo and Kleinstreuer (2004).
This model is a combination of the static part of Maxwell’s theory and a dynamic part taking
the contribution of the Brownian motion of nanoparticles into account.

• For specific heat,

• For density,

Numerical Computation

• Computations were carried out in the complete laminar regime with the Reynolds numbers
100, 200, 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000.
• Furthermore, computations were also conducted for different concentrations: 0–10% for the
Al2O3 and 0–6% for the CuO nanofluids.
• To determine the lengths for hydrodynamically fully developed flow and thermally fully
developed flow the following equations were used:
CFD Analysis of Heat Transfer Enhancement of A Car Radiator using
Nanofluid as A Coolant
Vinod M. Angadi, R. Nagaraj, Dr. O. D. Hebbal
 Numerical Investigation of the effects of fin shape, antifreeze and
nanoparticles on the performance of compact finned-tube heat
exchangers for automobile radiator
S.H. Habibian, A. Mostafazade Abolmaali, H. Afshin

• Properties of water, water-antifreeze (ethylene glycol) mixture and nanoparticles are indicated in Table 3.
• Fin material was considered aluminum and its thermal conductivity was set , = 202 W/mk
Boundary Conditions
• Cooling fluid flow has not been simulated when comparing fins to each other in
order to simplify calculations and decrease time and volume of computations. In this
case, constant temperature boundary condition of 358K was considered for cooling
fluid wall
• When simulating effects of antifreeze and nanoparticles in the cooling fluid,
conjugate boundary condition was applied for the wall.
• Velocity inlet boundary condition was applied to air and cooling fluid inlets. Pressure
outlet boundary condition was assumed with zero-gauge pressure.
• Inlet air temperature was set as 298K.

Numerical Approach
• Convection and diffusion terms discretization was carried out by upwind method
with second order precision.
• Standard k-ε was adopted for turbulence modeling and SIMPLE algorithm was
applied for velocity-pressure coupling.

Parameter Definition
Heat transfer augmentation by nano-fluids and circular fin insert in double
tube heat exchanger – A numerical exploration
C. Gnanavel R. Saravanan , M. Chandrasekaran

• Density of water nanofluid is determined by using the formula given by

• specific heat capacity of water nanofluid is estimated by

• thermal conductivity and viscosity are estimated by

• The first order upwind discrimination scheme was used for the energy, momentum, and turbulence parameters
and the second order pressure interpolation scheme and SIMPLE pressure–velocity coupling were implemented.
• The inlet and outlet temperatures of hot water side is 350.15 K and 300 K and Cold side inlet and outlet
temperature is 300 K and 331 K respectively.
• The experiments carried out with the done for Reynolds number of 1000, 2000, 3000, 5000 and 10000.
• The pressure based and absolute velocity formulation at steady time solver type was assigned.
• The Realizable k-epsilon energy equation is used at uniform inlet temperature in the viscous model.
 Numerical exploration of heat transfer in a heat exchanger tube with
cone shape inserts and Al2O3 and CuO nanofluids
M. Karuppasamy , R. Saravanan M. Chandrase, karan , V. Muthuraman

Mathematical Modeling

• Single phase model in which both the fluid phase and the particles are in thermal equilibrium and flow
with the same local velocity is considered

• Nanofluids in a horizontal circular pipe under uniform heat flux boundary condition, whereas a multi-
phase model is carried out in Saha and Paul.

• Computational geometry consists of a pipe with length L of 1.5 m and a circular section with inner
diameter (Di), of 0.058 m.

Governing equations

• Fluid flow is incompressible, Newtonian and turbulent

• Radiation effects and viscous dissipation are negligible.
• Three main parameters involved in calculating heat transfer rate of the Nano fluid are heat capacity,
viscosity, and thermal conductivity, which may be quite different from those of the original pure fluid.

Computational Domain and Meshes

• The problem under consideration consists of steady, forced turbulent convection flows and heat
transfer of a Nanofluid flowing inside a circular pipe with conical insert
• The CFD domain consists of a circular pipe with length L of 1500 mm with diameter D is 50.8 mm. The
pipe has appropriate length in order to obtain fully developed velocity and temperature profiles at the
outlet.
 • The condition of the constant wall heat flux is considered in this study.

Boundary Conditions

• The fluid enters with uniform temperature of T0 = 300 K and velocity V0 at the inlet
• In order to validate the CFD model Reynolds number and thermal boundary condition were chosen to
match the available correlations
• At the outlet of the computational model a relative average pressure equalling zero was defined
• A constant heat of h = 600 W/Km2 is specified for the wall (wall surface).

Thermo physical properties of the nano fluids

• The single-phase approach is chosen to calculate the thermo physical properties of Nano fluids as it is
widely used in the literature
Numerical Resizing Study of Al2O3 and CuO Nanofluids in the Flat Tubes of a Radiator
M. Elsebay, I. Elbadawy*, M. H. Shedid**, M. Fatouh

• The radiator is an arrangement of flat tubes equipped with plate fins for liquid-to-air cooling. Each
tube has dimensions of height (H), width (W) and length (L) of 3, 9 and 345 mm, respectively. These
dimensions are considered typical ones that were used in a car radiator as reported by Hussein et al.
• The flow is laminar; hence the viscous dissipation term can be neglected
• The single-phase fluid approach will be applied. Although the nanofluid is actually a two-phase fluid in
nature, the results of [12-14] show that the nanofluid behaves more like a pure fluid than a liquid–
solid mixture

• Table 1 lists the conditions of the nanofluid flow. At the flat tube inlet, uniform inlet velocity boundary
condition is adopted while the outlet boundary condition depends on the flow characteristics.
• For example, in the cases of the thermal entrance length (Xth= 0.05 Re.Pr.Dh) is less than the tube
length, the outflow boundary condition is used, while the pressure outlet is adopted in other cases.
• Following Park and Pak [2], air side heat transfer coefficient and temperature are selected by ho = 50
W/m2K and T = 303 K, respectively at a mean vehicle speed with maximum velocity 72 (km/hr). No slip
condition is used to prescribe the tube wall
• By assuming that the nanoparticles are well dispersed within the base fluid, thus the nanoparticles
concentration can be considered uniform throughout the system. Therefore, the effective thermo-
physical properties of the mixtures can be evaluated using some classical formulae as usually used for
two phase flow.
• The following correlations have been used to predict nanofluids thermal conductivity [17], viscosity
[18], specific heat and density, respectively.
 Numerical Study on Performance of Flat Tube with Water Based Copper
Oxide Nanofluids

• The pressure drop on the outer sides of the flat tube is low when compared to the circular cross-
section tubes. The low pressure drop on the outer side provides an advantage and enhances the heat
performance of the tube.
• The pressure (p), temperature (T) and all the three velocity components VX ,VY and VZ are solved in
the interior domain of the flat tube. For the post processing the surface heat flux, surface temperature,
outlet temperature, centreline pressure and outlet pressure are recorded.

Thermophysical Properties
Boundary Conditions

• The inlet is set as velocity inlet with hydraulic diameter of 0.00535m and turbulence intensity of
10%.
• The boundary wall is set as convection surface with h=150 W/m2K. The wall thickness is very low
and therefore is considered negligible.
 Numerical Study on Turbulent Forced Convective Heat Transfer
Using Nanofluids TiO2 in an Automotive Cooling System

• Fig. 1 shows the automobile radiator used in this study, which consists of a flat tube with a length
(L=500 mm) and hydraulic diameter (Dh=4.5 mm).

• Steady-state, incompressible and Newtonian turbulent fluid flows with constant thermophysical
properties of the nanofluid assumed. Additionally, heat conduction in the axial direction and wall
thickness of the tubes was neglected.
• Using infinitesimal (less than 100 nm) solid particles, the single-phase approach can be used, and
thus, the single-phase approach was adopted for nanofluid modelling
• The thermal properties of the nanofluid can be estimated by the equations below