Forced boiling of nanofluids, effects of contact angle and surface wettability

This paper was presented at the 3rd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2011), which was held at the Makedonia Palace Hotel, Thessaloniki in Greece. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Thessaly, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute.Nanofluids are the suspension of ultra fine particles in a conventional base fluid which tremendously changes the heat transfer characteristics of the original fluid. In this paper the boiling characteristics of different nanofluids was studied numerically using a CFD approach. Dispersions of Al2O3, SiO2, and ZrO2 nanoparticles in water at different concentrations (0.1, 0.01 and 0.001% by volume) have been used. Effects of some noticeable parameters such as nanoparticle concentration and temperature profile on the critical heat flux (CHF) have been investigated. The results of CFD simulation based on two-phase models were compared with experimental data. Boiling curves and critical heat flux were measured for the base fluid and the nanofluids. Based on the simulation results, it was concluded that the using of the Zirconium oxide (0.001%) led to modest (up to 31%) increase in the CHF. The minimum enhancement belongs to the aluminum oxide (0.1%) which increases the critical heat flux up to 11%. According to the experimental results, despite of expectation, addition of the nanoparticles causes decreasing the boiling heat transfer coefficient. This reduction is related to the changing of the surface characteristic causing by depositing the nanoparticles. In the Al2O3/water and SiO2/water nanofluids, the surface contact angle increases with increase in the nanoparticle volume fraction, so the CHF decreases

Numerical simulation of a supercritical CO2 geothermosiphon

The thermo-hydraulic performance of a CO2 geothermosiphon has been numerically investigated using the commercially available software CFX. A simple Engineered (or Enhanced) Geothermal System, EGS, consisting of an injection and a production well as well as a reservoir is numerically simulated. Both water and carbon dioxide have been examined as the working fluid. While the former fluid has been very popular for its availability, the latter offers advantages such as favorable thermodynamic properties as well as the inherent possibility of geosequestration. However, detailed analysis of such CO2 geothermosiphon systems is not available in the open literature. Higher heat extraction rate from the reservoir at lower pressure drops for a CO2 geothermosiphon, compared to water-based systems, can be achieved and general criteria for that are presented. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Numerical simulation of a supercritical CO2 geothermosiphon

The thermo-hydraulic performance of a CO2 geothermosiphon has been numerically investigated using the commercially available software CFX. A simple Engineered (or Enhanced) Geothermal System, EGS, consisting of an injection and a production well as well as a reservoir is numerically simulated. Both water and carbon dioxide have been examined as the working fluid. While the former fluid has been very popular for its availability, the latter offers advantages such as favorable thermodynamic properties as well as the inherent possibility of geosequestration. However, detailed analysis of such CO2 geothermosiphon systems is not available in the open literature. Higher heat extraction rate from the reservoir at lower pressure drops for a CO2 geothermosiphon, compared to water-based systems, can be achieved and general criteria for that are presented. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Numerical Study of Mixing Thermal Conductivity Models for Nanofluid Heat Transfer Enhancement

Researchers have paid attention to nanofluid applications, since nanofluids have revealed their potentials as working fluids in many thermal systems. Numerical studies of convective heat transfer in nanofluids can be based on considering them as single- and two-phase fluids. This work is focused on improving the single-phase nanofluid model performance, since the employment of this model requires less calculation time and it is less complicated due to utilizing the mixing thermal conductivity model, which combines static and dynamic parts used in the simulation domain alternately. The in-house numerical program has been developed to analyze the effects of the grid nodes, effective viscosity model, boundary-layer thickness, and of the mixing thermal conductivity model on the nanofluid heat transfer enhancement. CuO–water, Al2O3–water, and Cu–water nanofluids are chosen, and their laminar fully developed flows through a rectangular channel are considered. The influence of the effective viscosity model on the nanofluid heat transfer enhancement is estimated through the average differences between the numerical and experimental results for the nanofluids mentioned. The nanofluid heat transfer enhancement results show that the mixing thermal conductivity model consisting of the Maxwell model as the static part and the Yu and Choi model as the dynamic part, being applied to all three nanofluids, brings the numerical results closer to the experimental ones. The average differences between those results for CuO–water, Al2O3–water, and CuO–water nanofluid flows are 3.25, 2.74, and 3.02%, respectively. The mixing thermal conductivity model has been proved to increase the accuracy of the single-phase nanofluid simulation and to reveal its potentials in the single-phase nanofluid numerical studies. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature