Heat transfer enhancement in natural convection using water based Fe3O4 nanofluid inside a square cavity

Abstract

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

Natural convection heat transfer has many applications, especially in the field of solar thermal applications, electronic cooling etc., Heat transfer enhancement techniques in natural convection deals essentially with addition of fins of various configuration. Since the introduction of nanofluids by Choi et al [1], nanofluids continue to be considered as one of the sought after options of heat transfer enhancement. This is due to the excellent improvement in heat transfer characteristics due to the addition of nanosized solid particles into base fluids such as water, ethylene glycol etc., in the present study, an effort is made to study the heat transfer enhancement inside a square cavity when the water is seeded with magnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles using numerical experiments. The volume fractions considered in the analysis range from 0.1% to 0.6%. It is observed that the enhancement is less than 10% for 0.1% and 0.3% volume fractions considered in the analysis for the range of Rayleigh numbers considered.