Convective Heat Transfer of Mono and Hybrid Nanofluid In Porous Micro-Channel: Experimental and Numerical Approach

Z. Saghir[1]
[1]Ryerson University, Canada
Published in 2019

The author’s goal is to demonstrate the use of high porosity open-celled aluminum 6061-T6 foam as an effective heat sink with applications in electronics cooling. The experiment will demonstrate the effects of varying porosity, heat flux, and flow rate on the effectiveness of the heat sink in question. Using a simulated computer chip, the effectiveness of the sink is to be assessed by the pressure drop across the foam, and the effective heat removal rate. The pressure drop is used for measuring the required pumping power for each combinations of flow rate, heat flux, and porosity. In scenarios where a metal foam is interacting with a fluid phase, conventional heat transfer analysis cannot be used to determine the material properties or the fluid and thermal characteristics. COMSOL Multiphysics® simulation software was used to solve the problem numerically. A numerical  comparison with experimental data showed a very good agreement. Heat enhancement has been detected by using mono nanofluid and improved by using hybrid nanofluid. Different number of micro-channel in rectangular configuration were studied and it was found that the optimum number of micro-channel should not exceed three due to the presence of boundary layer.

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