Numerical Investigation of Convective Heat Transfer of Refined Kerosene-Alumina Nanofluid Under Laminar and Turbulent Regime

The study reports Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) investigations of the convective heat transfer coefficient of Al2O3/refined kerosene nanofluids. The study was carried out under laminar and turbulent regime in a circular tube under uniform and constant heat flux on the wall. The study was carried out for Re 500 to 5500 for base refined kerosene and with alumina added with 0.01% and 0.05% volume concentration in the base refined kerosene. The size of the alumina nanoparticle was 35 nm. Different computational models of Ansys-Fluent were used for the study. For laminar flows, laminar viscous models and K-Epsilon model for turbulence modelling was used. Energy model was used to define convective heat transfer and a discrete phase model to study particle behaviour and flow pattern in the tube. Multi-phase model with two phase refined kerosene suspended with alumina nano particles were used for the study. Experimental and simulation results showed that as the Reynolds number and the particle concentration increased there was an enhancement in the thermal performance of nanofluids which was found to be higher than that of the base fluid. The convective heat transfer increased by 14% for volume concentration of 0.05% and Reynolds number of 5500.