Convective heat transfer of nanofluids with correlations

To investigate the convective heat transfer of nanofiuids, experiments were performed using silver-water nanofluids under laminar, transition and turbulent flow regimes in a horizontal 4.3 mm inner-diameter tube-in-tube counter-current heat transfer test section. The volume concentration of the nanoparticles varied from 0.3% to 0.9% in steps of 0.3%, and the effects of thermo-physical properties, inlet temperature, volume concentration, and mass flow rate on heat transfer coefficient were investigated. Experiments showed that the suspended nanoparticles remarkably increased the convective heat transfer coefficient, by as much as 28.7% and 69.3% for 0.3% and 0.9% of silver content, respectively. Based on the experimental results a correlation was developed to predict the Nusselt number of the silver-water nanofluid, with +/- 10% agreement between experiments and prediction. (C) 2011 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.