Comparative Study of Laminar Convective Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop of Nanofluids through Curved Geometries

In this paper, numerical simulation of flow and heat transfer of Al2O3/water nanofluid has been carried out through three different geometries involving a straight pipe, a 90o curved pipe and a 180o curved pipe under constant heat flux condition. Employing singe-phase model for the nanofluid, the Navier-Stokes and energy equations for an incompressible and laminar flow have been solved in a body fitted coordinate system using a homemade code based on control-volume approach, while all thermophysical properties of the nanofluid are dependent on considered temperature. The effects of different nanoparticle concentration and centrifugal forces on the temperature and pressure field have been examined in detail. The accordance of numerical results with experimental data expresses the accuracy of the employed numerical method for simulating flow and heat transfer in the curved pipes, as well as the accuracy of the single-phase model of the nanofluid. The Presented results indicated that both the nanoparticle and curvature effects improve the heat transfer characteristics dramatically, but at the expense of considerable increase in pressure drop. Furthermore, the results showed that in order to obtain the optimum operating conditions of nanofluids, different parameters such as heat transfer enhancement and pressure drop must be considered simultaneously. Finally, a method has been proposed to indicate the proper nanofluid and flow geometry for special practical applications.