Convective Heat Transfer Characteristics of Silver-Water Nanofluid Under Laminar and Turbulent Flow Conditions

Abstract

The convective heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of silver-water nanofluids is measured in a counter flow heat exchanger from laminar to turbulent flow regime. The experimental results show that the convective heat transfer coefficient of the nanofluids increases by up to 69% at a concentration of 0.9 vol. % compared with that of pure water. Furthermore, the experimental results show that the convective heat transfer coefficient enhancement exceeds the thermal conductivity enhancement. It is observed that the measured heat transfer coefficient is higher than that of the predicted ones using Gnielinski equation by at least 40%. The use of the silver nanofluid has a little penalty in pressure drop up to 55% increase 0.9% volume concentration of silver nanoparticles.