NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF HEAT TRANSFER OF ZnO/WATER NANOFLUID IN THE CONCENTRIC TUBE AND PLATE HEAT EXCHANGERS

The plate and concentric tube heat exchangers are tested by using the water-water and nanofluid-water streams. The ZnO/Water (0.5%v/v) nanofluid has been used as the hot stream. The heat transfer rate omitted of hot stream and overall heat transfer coefficients in both heat exchangers are measured as a function of hot and cold streams mass flow rates. The experimental results show that the heat transfer rate and heat transfer coefficients of the nanofluid in both of the heat exchangers is higher than that of the base liquid (i.e., water) and the efficiency of plate heat exchange is higher than concentric tube heat exchanger. In the plate heat exchanger the heat transfer coefficient of nanofluid at mcold = mhot =10gr/sec is about 20% higher than base fluid and under the same conditions in the concentric heat exchanger is 14% higher than base fluid. The heat transfer rate and heat transfer coefficients increases with increase in mass flow rates of hot and cold streams. Also the CFD code is used to simulate the performance of the mentioned heat exchangers. The CFD results are compared to the experimental data and showed good agreement. It is shown that the CFD is a reliable tool for investigation of heat transfer of nanofluids in the various heat exchangers