Hydrodynamic and thermal analysis of water, ethylene glycol and water-ethylene glycol as base fluids dispersed by aluminum oxide nano-sized solid particles

• Published in: International journal of numerical methods for heat & fluid flow Vol. 30; no. 9; pp. 4349 - 4386
• Main Authors: Menni, Younes, Chamkha, Ali J, Massarotti, Nicola, Ameur, Houari, Kaid, Noureddine, Bensafi, Mohammed
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bradford Emerald Publishing Limited 21.08.2020; Emerald Group Publishing Limited
• Subjects: Algorithms; Aluminium; Aluminum; Aluminum oxide; Barriers; Brownian motion; Channel flow; Coefficient of friction; Coefficients; Computational fluid dynamics; Convection; Cooling; Diffusion; Dynamic pressure; Efficiency; Energy equation; Ethene; Finite element method; Finite volume method; Flat plates; Flow characteristics; Fluid dynamics; Fluid flow; Fluids; Friction; Heat conductivity; Heat exchangers; Heat transfer; Hydrodynamics; Interpolation; K-epsilon turbulence model; Kinetic energy; Low pressure; Mathematical models; Microorganisms; Nanoparticles; Neural networks; Permeability; Pressure; Radiation; Rayleigh number; Reynolds number; Skin; Skin friction; Temperature fields; Thermal analysis; Turbulence; Turbulent flow; Velocity coupling; Velocity distribution; Velocity profiles; Viscosity; Water analysis; CFD; Aluminium oxide; ethylene glycol; water-ethylene; Al; water; O
• ISSN: 0961-5539; 1758-6585
• DOI: 10.1108/HFF-10-2019-0739

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to carry out a hydrodynamic and thermal analysis of turbulent forced-convection flows of pure water, pure ethylene glycol and water-ethylene glycol mixture, as base fluids dispersed by Al2O3 nano-sized solid particles, through a constant temperature-surfaced rectangular cross-section channel with detached and attached obstacles, using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. Effects of various base fluids and different Al2O3 nano-sized solid particle solid volume fractions with Reynolds numbers ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 were analyzed. The contour plots of dynamic pressure, stream-function, velocity-magnitude, axial velocity, transverse velocity, turbulent intensity, turbulent kinetic energy, turbulent viscosity and temperature fields, the axial velocity profiles, the local and average Nusselt numbers, as well as the local and average coefficients of skin friction, were obtained and investigated numerically. Design/methodology/approach The fluid flow and temperature fields were simulated using the Commercial CFD Software FLUENT. The same package included a preprocessor GAMBIT which was used to create the mesh needed for the solver. The RANS equations, along with the standard k-epsilon turbulence model and the energy equation were used to control the channel flow model. All the equations were discretized by the finite volume method using a two-dimensional formulation, using the semi-implicit method for pressure-linked equations pressure-velocity coupling algorithm. With regard to the flow characteristics, the interpolation QUICK scheme was applied, and a second-order upwind scheme was used for the pressure terms. The under-relaxation was changed between the values 0.3 and 1.0 to control the update of the computed variables at each iteration. Moreover, various grid systems were tested to analyze the effect of the grid size on the numerical solution. Then, the solutions are said to be converging when the normalized residuals are smaller than 10-12 and 10-9 for the energy equation and the other variables, respectively. The equations were iterated by the solver till it reached the needed residuals or when it stabilized at a fixed value. Findings The result analysis showed that the pure ethylene glycol with Al2O3 nanoparticles showed a significant heat transfer enhancement, in terms of local and average Nusselt numbers, compared with other pure or mixed fluid-based nanofluids, with low-pressure losses in terms of local and average skin friction coefficients. Originality/value The present research ended up at interesting results which constitute a valuable contribution to the improvement of the knowledge basis of professional work through research related to turbulent flow forced-convection within channels supplied with obstacles, and especially inside heat exchangers and solar flat plate collectors.