Nanofluids in Improving Heat Transfer Characteristics of Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger

The thermal performances of shell and tube heat exchanger [STHE] are investigated using Ag–W and CuO–W nanofluids with suspended particle volume concentrations between 0.02% and 0.06% of Ag and CuO. The comparison is made with reference to base fluid. The result revealed that thermal conductivity of the nanofluids, which is dependent on the particle volume concentration, influenced the heat transfer ability. Highest overall as well as convective heat transfer coefficients and highest actual heat transfer are obtained for 0.06% volume concentration CuO–W nanofluid. An improvement of about 19% in heat transfer coefficient is recorded for 0.06 vol% of CuO–W nanofluids with respect to water. Also, the overall heat transfer coefficient enhanced between 64 and 79% for 0.06 vol% of CuO–W nanofluids. However, in the tube-side, pressure drop increases with increase in nanofluid volume concentrations. Actual heat transfer improved by 39–56% with reference to water. It can be concluded that better heat transfer characteristic for the STHE is obtained by keeping the shell-side mass flow as fixed and varying the tube-side mass flow rates.