Experimental investigation of heat transfer enhancement in a microtube using nanofluids

Abstract

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.

Forced convective laminar flow of different types of nanofluids such as Al2O3 and SiO2, with nanoparticle size 30 nm, and different volume fractions ranged from 0.5% to 1% using water as base fluids was investigated experimentally. The Microtube (MT) with 0.01 cm diameter and 20 cm length is used in this investigation. This investigation covers Reynolds number in the range of 90 to 800. The results have shown that SiO2-water nanofluid has the highest Nusselt number, followed by Al2O3-water, and lastly pure water. The maximum heat transfer enhancement was about 22% when using the nanofluids and the experimental results agree well with the conventional theory.