Experimental investigation on frequency pulsation effects on a single pass plate heat exchanger performance

This paper investigates combined heat transfer improvement methods. These methods include introducing pulsating flow, adding nanofluids, and manipulating the flow's characteristics in a corrugated plate heat exchanger. Tests are carried out with multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT), graphene nanoplate (GNP), and a mixture of GNP and MWCNT meeting the requirement of 0.01% nanofluids volume fraction and exposed to pulsation. Results demonstrated that the use of pulsating frequencies from 0 to 30 Hz of GNP-water, MIX nanofluids-water, and MWCNT-water nanofluids with a constant concentration of 0.01 wt% leads to a significant improvement in heat transfer. Using pure water at frequency f = 0 Hz as a benchmark, the Nusselt number of the mixture nanofluid increases by 15.2%, 27.5%, 40.4%, and 52.8% with the increase of frequency pulsation from 0 to 30 Hz with a slight effect on the pressure-drop at this low used constant nanofluid concentration = 0.01%. The highest Nusselt number value for GNP-water nanofluid improved by an amount of 58.3% at the highest frequency compared with pure water at f = 0 Hz.