Experimental investigation of convective heat transfer of Al2O3/water nanofluid in circular tube

Nanofluids are suspensions of metallic or nonmetallic nanopowders in base liquid and can be employed to increase heat transfer rate in various applications. In this work laminar flow forced convection heat transfer of Al2O3/water nanofluid inside a circular tube with constant wall temperature was investigated experimentally. The Nusselt numbers of nanofluids were obtained for different nanoparticle concentrations as well as various Peclet and Reynolds numbers. Experimental results emphasize the enhancement of heat transfer due to the nanoparticles presence in the fluid. Heat transfer coefficient increases by increasing the concentration of nanoparticles in nanofluid. The increase in heat transfer coefficient due to presence of nanoparticles is much higher than the prediction of single phase heat transfer correlation used with nanofluid properties. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.