BROWNIAN HEAT TRANSFER ENHANCEMENT IN THE TURBULENT REGIME

Abstract

The paper presents convection heat transfer of a turbulent flow Al2O3/water nanofluid in a circular duct. The duct is a under constant and uniform heat flux. The paper computationally investigates the system’s thermal behavior in a wide range of Reynolds number and also volume concentration up to 6%. To obtain the nanofluid thermophysical properties, the Hamilton-Crosser model along with the Brownian motion effect are utilized. Then the thermal performance of the system with the nanofluid is compared to the conventional systems which use water as the working fluid. The results indicate that the use of nanofluid of 6% improves the heat transfer rate up to 36.8% with respect to pure water. Therefore, using the Al2O3/water nanofluid instead of water can be a great choice when better heat transfer is needed.