Single-phase fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of nanofluid in a circular microchannel: Development of flow and heat transfer correlations

Abstract

The convective heat transfer in microchannels with the use of nanofluids has proved to be a potential candidate for cooling of micro-electromechanical system devices. The current research article presents the experimental study on fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of ${Al}_{2} O_{3}$ /water nanofluid in a microchannel under thermally developing laminar flow at Reynolds number ranging from 300 to 1000. The experimental set-up of a circular microchannel test section with an inner diameter of $500 μ m$ and length of $100 mm$ is fabricated to conduct the experimental study. The effect of nanoparticle concentration ( $1.0 - 3.0 %$ ), Reynolds number ( $300 \leq Re \leq 1000$ ) on fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of ${Al}_{2} O_{3}$ /water nanofluid have been measured and compared with that of distilled water (DW). The results indicate that the maximum enhancement in local heat transfer coefficient is achieved up to $24.5 %$ , while friction factor is achieved up to $22.7 %$ for ${Al}_{2} O_{3}$ /water nanofluid with nanoparticle concentration of $3.0 %$ as compared to DW. The results showed that the performance evaluation criterion of ${Al}_{2} O_{3}$ /water nanofluid is greater than unity ( $η > 1.0$ ), implying the benefits of nanofluids as compared to DW. Moreover, the predicted data obtained by the present proposed correlations for friction factor and local Nusselt number using ${Al}_{2} O_{3}$ /water nanofluid show reasonably good agreement with the deviations of $\pm 5 %$ and $\pm 10 %$ , respectively, with the numerical data as compared to the predicted data obtained by the existing correlations available in the literature.

Keywords

DW friction factor local heat transfer coefficient microchannel nanofluid Nusselt number Reynolds number performance evaluation criterion

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