COMPARISON BETWEEN HEAT TRANSFER CHARACTERISTICS OF TiO2/DEIONIZED WATER AND KAOLIN/DEIONIZED WATER NANOFLUIDS IN THE PLATE HEAT EXCHANGER

The plate heat exchangers, of high efficiency and small size, with corrugated thin plates are compact-type heat exchangers which were widely used in different sectors of industry. To enhance the heat transfer characteristics of plate heat exchangers, nanofluids can be utilized as working fluids. In this study, the effects of using TiO2/deionized water and kaolin/deionized water nanofluids as working fluids in the plate heat exchanger were experimentally analyzed. In order to illustrate the enhancement rate of heat transfer, the experiments were conducted by using deionized water, TiO2/deionized water, and kaolin/deionized water nanofluids. The experiments were done with varying temperature and fluid flow rate. Each nanofluid has 2% (wt./wt.) nanoparticle content. Also, Triton X-100 was added to the prepared mixture as 0.2% of a final concentration to improve the solubility of nanoparticles. The obtained results showed that a kaolin/deionized water nanofluid had higher thermal performance than TiO2/deionized water nanofluid. The maximum increment in the heat transfer rate using TiO2/deionized water and kaolin/deionized water was 12% and 18%, respectively.