Experimental investigation of thermal and hydraulic performance of a plate heat exchanger using Al2O3 nanofluid

Nowadays, with the development of technology, energy demand is increasing and using the energy more efficiently becomes important. Plate heat exchangers are widely used in many applications such as power plants, nuclear reactors, food, chemical industries and air conditioning systems. Because of wide application area, it is very important that plate heat exchangers must be very efficient and compact. In order to make them more efficient and compact, researchers pay attention to utilize nanofluids as a working fluid in plate heat exchangers, since their thermo physical properties are much better than the industrial fluids. Therefore, an experimental set-up is designed and constructed in TOBB ETU, Heat Exchangers Laboratory to test and investigate the effect of utilizing Al2O3/water nanofluids in plate heat exchangers. Experiments are performed with tap water at first, then they are repeated for two different Al2O3/water nanofluid concentrations (1% wt. and 0.5% wt.). For all experiments, flow rates are changing between 100-450 l/h. As a result of this study, correlation of Nusselt number and friction factor for all cases are developed and enhancement rates on heat transfer coefficient are obtained. Moreover, increase on pressure drop due to utilizing Al2O3/water nanofluids is investigated.