Heat Transfer by Porous Pin Fins and Nanofluid in Rectangular Minichannels

The forced convective heat transfers with 3D, triangular, porous pin fins as bundle of MWCNTs at the bottom of rectangular mini channels made of silicon. Overall heat transfer performances in porous pin fins are much better than those in traditional solid pin fins. As nanofluid volume concentration increases, pressure drops and heat fluxes in porous pin fin channels increase and maximal overall heat transfer are obtained at 0.01% concentration. Enhancement in Nu were 6% with respect to porosity and 88 % with respect to 0.01% Al2O3/H2O. With the same physical parameters, the Nu in the staggered triangular porous pin fin channels of CNTs with fin height of 0.75 mm, smaller fin width of 0.5 mm and spacing double the fin width using 0.01% CuO/H2O nanofluid showed the highest enhancement of 91% at higher Re with a corresponding decrease in pressure drop of 25%.