Synthesis, preparation and the experimental study of silver/water nanofluid to optimize convective heat transfer in a shell and tube heat exchanger

This work reports an experimental investigation on the forced convective heat transfer for silver/water nanofluid in a shell and tube heat exchanger. At first, the silver nanoparticles were synthesized by reduction method and distributed in water to prepare nanofluid. The formation of the silver nanoparticles was characterized by UV-visible spectroscopy, DLS and TEM analyses. Then, overall heat transfer coefficient and convective heat transfer coefficient were measured under the turbulent flow regime for various ranges of Reynolds numbers, and volume concentrations of suspended nanoparticles. The UV-Visible spectra of silver nanoparticles showed a surface plasmon resonance peak at 415nm. TEM and DLS analyses revealed the spherical shape with a mean particle size of 46nm. In addition, the results displayed that the overall heat transfer coefficient and convective heat transfer coefficient of nanofluid is greater than water as base fluid at similar mass flow rate. Also, it happened optimum of the convective heat transfer coefficient ratio and clearly convective heat transfer coefficient of silver/water nanofluid at 0.75%