Screening Single Phase Laminar Convective Heat Transfer of Nanofluids in a Micro-tube

Nano scale solid particles dispersed in base fluids are a new class of engineered colloidal solutions called nanofluids. Several studies reported enhancement of heat transfer by using nanofluids. This article reports convective single-phase heat transfer coefficients in an open 30 cm long, 0.50 mm internal diameter stainless steel test section. The setup is used for screening single phase laminar convective heat transfer with water and three different nanofluids: water based Al2O3, ZrO2, and TiO2 (all with 9 wt% of particles). A syringe pump with adjustable pumping speed is used to inject fluids into the test section. Thirteen T-type thermocouples are attached on the outer surface of the test section to record the local wall temperatures. Furthermore, two T-type thermocouples are used to measure inlet and outlet fluid temperatures. A DC power supply is used to heat up the test section and a differential pressure transducer is used to measure the pressure drop across the tube. Furthermore, the effective thermal conductivities of these nanofluids are measured using the Transient Plane Source (TPS) method at a temperature range of 20 - 50 degrees C. The experimental average values of heat transfer coefficients for nanofluids are compared with water. Enhancement in heat transfer of nanofluids is observed only when compared at constant Reynolds number (Due to higher viscosity for nanofluids, higher velocity or mass flow rate is required for nanofluids to reach the same Reynolds number). The other methods of comparison: equal mass flow rate, volume flow rate, pressure drop and pumping power did not show any augmentation of the heat transfer coefficient for the tested nanofluids compared to water.