Liquid Nanofilms’ Evaporation Inside a Heat Exchanger by Mixed Convection

Abstract

The present work focuses on a numerical investigation of nanofilms’ (water/copper and water/aluminium) evaporation inside a heat exchanger by mixed convection flowing down on one channel plate. The channel was composed of two parallel vertical plates. The wetted plate was heated while the other plate was maintained isothermal and dry. The impact of the dispersion of different types of nanoparticles in the liquid film and their volume fraction in mass and heat exchange and the evaporation process has been analysed in this work. The results show that an increase of the nanoparticle inlet volume fraction enhances the efficiency of evaporation in heat exchangers. It is shown that an enhancement of 22% in evaporation rate has been recorded when the inlet nanoparticle volume fraction is elevated by 5%. The results show that the water–copper nanofluid had higher evaporation rate compared to water–aluminium nanofluid.