Heat Transfer Coefficient of Nanofluids in Minichannel Heat Sink

Convective heat transfer in a heat sink consisting of rectangular minichannels and cooled with alumina and titania nanofluids has been investigated experimentally and numerically. Numerical simulations were carried out in a three dimensional domain employing homogeneous mixture model with effective thermo-physical properties of nanofluids. The predictions of base temperature profiles of the heat sink cooled with both water and nanofluids agree well with the experimental data. Experimental and numerical results show that the investigated nanofluids neither exhibits unusual enhancement of heat transfer coefficient nor decreases the heat sink base temperature. Although both nanofluids showed marginal thermal conductivity enhancements, the presence of solid nanoparticles lowers the specific heat capacity of nanofluids offseting the advantage of thermal conductivity enhancement. For all investigated flow rates, the Nusselt number of both nanofluids overlaps with that of water indicating that both nanofluids behave like single-phase fluids.