Application of nanofluids in heat exchangers: A review

The purpose of this review summarizes the important published articles on the enhancement of the convection heat transfer in heat exchangers using nanofluids on two topics. The first section focuses on presenting the theoretical and experimental results for the effective thermal conductivity, viscosity and the Nusselt number reported by several authors. The second section concentrates on application of nanofluids in various types of heat exchangers: plate heat exchangers, shell and tube heat exchangers, compact heat exchangers and double pipe heat exchangers. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.