Eulerian-Eulerian two-phase numerical simulation of nanofluid laminar forced convection in a microchannel

In this paper, laminar forced convection heat transfer of a copper-water nanofluid inside an isothermally heated microchannel is studied numerically. An Eulerian two-fluid model is considered to simulate the nanofluid flow inside the microchannel and the governing mass, momentum and energy equations for both phases are solved using the finite volume method. For the first time, the detailed study of the relative velocity and temperature of the phases are presented and it has been observed that the relative velocity and temperature between the phases is very small and negligible and the nanoparticle concentration distribution is uniform. However, the two-phase modeling results show higher heat transfer enhancement in comparison to the homogeneous single-phase model. Also, the heat transfer enhancement increases with increase in Reynolds number and nanoparticle volume concentration as well as with decrease in the nanoparticle diameter, while the pressure drop increases only slightly. (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.