Influence of chevron angle and MWCNT/distilled water nanofluid on the thermo-hydraulic performance of compact plate heat exchanger: An experimental and numerical study

The paper presents comprehensive experimental and numerical study to evaluate thermo-hydraulic performance of 30 degrees and 60 degrees chevron plate geometries using multi walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT)/distilled water nanofluid as coolants. The experimentation using distilled water and MWCNT nanofluid on cold side was conducted by varying flow rate and concentration, keeping hot side at constant flow. The three dimensional computational models geometrically similar to actual plates were developed. The numerical analysis was done using Ansys 15.0 (Fluent) solver. The correlations based on experimental data are proposed to evaluate Nusselt number and friction factor of both chevron geometries having coefficient of determination 0.996-9998. The thermo-hydraulic performance parameters were numerically evaluated and validated with experiments. The results deviate by <1.5%. The heat transfer increases by 9.25% for 60 degrees plates compared to 30 degrees using distilled water. However, maximum heat transfer of 13.64% and 17.27% was found for 30 degrees and 60 degrees plates respectively using 1 vol % nanofluid.(c) 2022 Published by Elsevier B.V.