Determiination of Heat Transfer Characteristics Employing Modified Maximum Slope Method for Porous Media Heat Exchanger Using Al2O3-Water Nanofluids

Abstract

It has been well documented in many literature that porous media and nanofluid can augment heat transfer in many engineering system. However the combined usage of these two media has not been given much attention in literature. The objective of the present work is to experimentally investigate porous media heat exchanger using Al2O3/water nanofluids. The heat transfer characteristics is determined using transient testing method wherein, only one fluid stream flows steadily throughthe test core, then a transient perturbation in the inlet fluid temperature is induced and the outletfluid temperature variation is measured continuously. The measured data is evaluated using the maximum slope method to obtain the heat transfer characteristics. The results show an increase in Nusselt number values with the use of nanofluids in porous media heat exchanger compared to water.