Cfd Investigation Of Flow And Heat Transfer Enhancement In Cross Flow Microchannel Heat Exchanger Using Nanofluid
Author(s):
Sahib Shihab Ahmed, Nabeel Abdulhadi Ghyadh, Maher A.R. Sadiq Al-Baghdadi
Affiliation(s):
Mechanical Engineering Department, Engineering Faculty, University of Kufa, Najaf, Iraq.
Corresponding Author Email: [email protected];,
[email protected]
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
In several engineering fields, microchannel heat exchangers are commonly used, for example in microreactors of the hydrogen micro-fuel cells and in lab-on-chip devices in biotechnology. The micro-channels have a more excellent surface-to-volume ratio and a higher heat transfer rate with more miniaturized size and lower weight compared to regular scale channels. Advanced channel designs and working fluids can be added to enhance the heat transfer performance of microchannel heat exchangers. In this study, the numerical conjugate heat transfer and hydraulic performance of working fluid with and without nanofluids flow in microchannel heat exchangers with and without ribs on sidewalls of channels were investigated at different Reynolds numbers (0.7–22). CFD model of the microchannel heat exchangers with and without ribs on sidewalls and working with nanofluids as working fluids have been developed and analyzed. The findings indicate that adding ribs in microchannels could achieve heat transfer improvement compared to straight channels, but pressure drop increases simultaneously. It also shows the detailed effects of the design as well as the working fluids on the heat transfer and the pressure drop