Experimental and numerical investigation of heat transfer in the plate heat exchanger channels using nanofluids

The aim of this study is to investigate convection heat transfer and pressure drop experimentally and numerically by using nanofluids in the gasket plate heat exchanger channels. In the experimental and numerical studies, chevron type corrugated plates in the plate heat exchanger and Al2O3/water (40 nm) as nanofluids have been used. During the experiments, the mass flow rate of the hot fluid which loss heat was kept constant at 90 kg/h while the heat exchanger inlet temperature was kept constant at 40 °C. In additional to the mass flow rate of the cooling fluid (nanofluids) that the inlet temperature was kept constant at 17.5 °C has been changed as 90, 120, 150, 180, 240 and 300 kg/h. Numerical analysis of the two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) models set up for plate heat exchanger channels has also been carried out using ANSYS-Fluent software (package) programme. Single phase and two phase (mixture, Eulerian) approaches have been used in the numerical analyzes. In order to verifiy the numerical result of convection heat transfer coefficient and friction factor values obtained with the numerical analyzes were compared with the results of the experiments. Experiments and numerical analyzes were carried out in the nanofluids volume fraction of 0.25 %, 0.5 %, 0.75 % and 1 % and in the range of 500-2000 Reynolds number. In the experiments, it has been observed that increases with the volume fraction and mass flow rate of the nanofluids the convection heat transfer coefficient increases while the friction factor decreases. The enhancement heat transfer has been determined to be about 7.72 % for the minimum volume fraction while it is about 42.4 % for the maximum volume fraction compared to water. Upon taking the results of the heat transfer using nanofluids in the literature into consideration, experiments and numerical results obtained have been found out to be coherent.