National Institute of Technology Rourkela

Seminar and Technical Writing Odisha-769008, India

ME 4903 Department of Mechanical Engineering

Numerical analysis of heat transfer enhancement inside concentric

counter flow tube heat exchanger using different nanofluids
B Satyanarayan
120ME0337
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Rourkela, Odisha-769008, India
*Email Address: 120me0337@nitrkl.ac.in

ABSTRACT

The objective of this analysis is to investigate the enhancement of heat transfer and friction
factor within a counter flow concentric tube heat exchanger using various nanofluids. CuO,
Al2O3 and TiO2 nanoparticles suspended in water at 0.05% and 0.2% volume fractions were
tested for Reynolds numbers from 2000 to 12,000. The utilization of nanofluids is aimed at
increasing the thermal conductivity and conductive heat transfer coefficients in comparison to
the base fluids, thereby reducing the required tube length and pressure drop in heat
exchangers. A standard k-ε turbulence model based on two equations was employed to solve
the momentum and energy equations of nanofluids. The numerical results demonstrate that
all tested nanofluids exhibit superior heat transfer coefficients compared to pure water, with
CuO nanofluid demonstrating the best overall performance. The results can help in selection
of nanofluids for heat transfer applications.

1. Introduction
Advancements in nanotechnology have led to the development of a new type of heat transfer
fluids called nanofluids, created by dispersing nanoparticles between 10 and 50 nm in
classical heat transfer fluids [1]. The resulting nanofluids showed superior thermal
characteristics compared with traditional fluids. Many researchers have explored the
enhancement of heat transfer using nanofluids, both theoretically and experimentally [1-4].
The enhancement depends on various factors such as thermal properties, nanoparticle size
and shape, type, volume fraction and many more [5]. Several studies have shown that adding
nanoparticles to the base fluid can improve the heat transfer performance of heat exchangers.
For example, several studies have used different nanoparticles in water or ethylene glycol as
the base fluid and measured the heat transfer enhancement and friction factor of the nanofluid
Nomenclature Greek symbols
A Surface area [m2] ε Dissipation rate [W]

Cp Specific heat [J/Kg °C] ϕ Volume concentration

D Diameter [m] μ Dynamic viscosity [Pa. s]

E Total energy [J] μt Turbulent viscosity [Pa. s]

f Friction factor ρ Air density [Kg/m3]

G Generation of turbulent kinetic energy

h Heat transfer coefficient [W/ m2 °C] Subscripts

k Turbulent kinetic energy [J] bf Base fluid

Nu Nusselt number c Cold

Pk Production term of turbulent kinetic energy eff Effective

Re Reynolds number h Hot

T Temperature [°C] i Inner
U Overall heat transfer coefficient [W/ m 2 °C] k Turbulent kinetic energy
u Velocity components [m/s] nf Nanofluid
uτ Friction velocity [m/s] o Outer
v Velocity vector [m/s] t Turbulent
xi Coordinates system (indicial notation) w Wall

xj Coordinates system (indicial notation)

in different types of heat exchangers experimentally, such as the effect of Al 2O3 nanofluid in
concentric tubes by Rohit et al.[6] and Bherouz et al. [7], CuO-water nanofluid in double pipe
by Senthilraja and Vijayakumar [8], and Al2O3 nanofluid in shell and tube heat exchangers by
Darzi et al. [9] and Albadr et al. [10] for different Reynolds numbers and concentrations. The
results indicated a good potential in promoting the thermal performance of heat exchangers
by adding nanoparticles in the investigated ranges where there is no severe pressure drop
penalty [11].
In addition to experimental studies, numerical investigations are done to study thermal heat
transfer characteristics and friction factors in heat exchangers using nanofluids [12–15]. The
results showed that nanofluids enhanced the heat transfer performance of heat exchangers
compared to the base fluids, especially in the shell and tube heat exchanger. The stability of
nanofluid is also very important and many researchers have studied regarding the stability of
Fe3O4 nanoparticles [16-18]. The present study aimed to compare the heat transfer
enhancement effect of three different nanofluids (CuO, Al2O3, and TiO2 –water) on the heat
transfer and fraction factor using two different volume fractions of nanoparticles (0.05% and
0.2%) numerically in a concentric tube heat exchanger. The Finite Volume Method (FVM)
was used for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to solve conservation equations, and the
turbulence model based on two- equation standard k-ε was used during these simulations to
close the problem for turbulent viscosity.

2. Numerical model

2.1. Physical model and thermal properties

The concentric tube heat exchanger used was 69 cm long, inner and outer diameters were
1.27 cm and 2.45 cm respectively. The inner tube was 0.1 cm thick made from aluminium. In
the counter flow type heat exchanger, the hot nanofluid was flowing inside the inner tube at
60 °C while the cold fluid (pure water) was flowing inside the outer tube at 25 °C. Three
different types of nanofluids were used, namely (a) Copper oxide CuO (b) Aluminium oxide
Al2O3 and (c) Titanium oxide TiO2. 0.05% and 0.2% concentrations based on the volume
were tested. The thermal properties of nanofluid, such as density, specific heat, and thermal
conductivity, were calculated using Eqs. (1-3), and the values are shown in Table 1.
The density of nanofluid can be calculated as:
𝜌 = 𝜑𝜌 + (1 − 𝜑)𝜌 (1)
where ρp, ρbf are the densities of nanoparticles and base fluid, respectively, and φ is the
nanoparticle volume fraction.
The specific heat of the nanofluid can also be calculated as weight average:
(ρC ) = φ(ρC ) + (1 — φ)(ρC ) (2)
where Cpp and Cpbf are the specific heat of particle and base fluid, respectively. Thermal
conductivity for nanofluids was calculated based on the Maxwell model as follows:
λ + 2λk + 2ϕ(λ − λ )
λ = × (λ ) (3)
λ + 2λ − ϕ(λ − λ )
where λp and λf are the thermal conductivities of particle and base fluid, respectively.
Table. 1. Physical properties of base fluid (water) and nanofluid in the inner pipe at 0.05%
and 0.2% volume fraction. T. Salameh et al. International Journal of Thermofluids 20 (2023)
100432

Fluid Type Water Copper oxide Aluminum oxide Titanium

nanofluid nanofluid oxide
nanofluid
0.05%, 0.2% 0.05%, 0.2% 0.05%, 0.2%

Density 997.5 1000.2, 998.85, 998.95,

(kgm—3) 1008.3 1002.91 1003.3
Specific Heat 4182 4170.3, 4175.93, 4175.2,
(Jkg—1K—1) 4135.7 4157.79 4154.9
Thermal 0.6065 0.6073, 0.6074, 0.6099 0.6071,
conductivity 0.6098 0.6090
(Wm—1K—1)
Viscosity 0.00089 0.00131, 0.0009, 0.0009 0.0009,
(kgm—1s—1) 0.00131 0.0009

2.2. Governing Equations

The governing equations in vector form for mass, momentum, and energy can be written as
follows:
𝜕𝜌
+ ∇. (𝜌𝑣⃗) = 0 (4)
𝜕𝑡
𝜕
(𝜌𝑣⃗) + ∇. (𝜌𝑣⃗𝑣⃗) = −∇p + ∇. (𝜏⃗) + 𝜌𝑔⃗ (5)
𝜕𝑡
Where stress tensor is given by
2
𝜏⃗ = (∇𝑣⃗ + 𝑣⃗ ) − ∇. 𝑣⃗𝐼 (6)
3
𝜕
(𝜌𝐸) + ∇. (𝑣⃗(𝜌𝐸 + 𝜌)) = −∇p + ∇. 𝜆 ∇T + 𝜏⃗ . 𝑣⃗
𝜕𝑡
Where E is total energy as
𝑝 𝑣
𝐸 =ℎ− +
𝜌 2
Where λeff is the effective conductivity (λnf + λt , where λt is the turbulent thermal
conductivity, defined according to the turbulence model being used)
Eqs.(7) and (8) described the turbulence model based on two- equation standard k-ε as
follows:
𝜕 𝜕 𝜕 𝜇 𝜕𝑘
(𝜌𝑘) + (𝜌𝑘𝑢 ) = 𝜇+ + 𝐺 − 𝜌𝜀 (7)
𝜕𝑡 𝜕𝑥 𝜕𝑥 𝜎 𝜕𝑥
𝜕 𝜕 𝜕 𝜇 𝜕𝜀 𝜀 𝐶 𝜌𝜀
(𝜌𝜀) + (𝜌𝜀𝑢 ) = 𝜇+ +𝐺 𝐺 − (8)
𝜕𝑡 𝜕𝑥 𝜕𝑥 𝜎 𝜕𝑥 𝑘 𝑘
Where Gk represents the generation of turbulence kinetic energy due to the mean
velocity gradients in equations (7) and (8) as in Eq. (9).
𝜕𝑢
𝐺 = −𝜌𝑢 𝑢 (9)
𝜕𝑥
C1ε, and C2ε are constants ink and ε. σk and σε are the turbulent Prandtl numbers for k and ε
equations, respectively. The values ofC1ε, C2ε, σk and σε were 1.44, 1.92, 1, and 1.3
respectively [19].
The turbulent viscosity is calculated by combining k and ε as in Eq. (10):
𝑘
𝜇 = 𝑓 𝜌𝐶 (10)
𝜀
where Cμ was giving a value of 0.09.
2.2. Method
The following assumptions have been made in order to perform CFD analysis :
 It is a 3-Dimensional, steady and incompressible flow.
 Heat exchanger has perfectly insulated i.e., no heat loss to surrounding.
 Body forces are neglected.
 Properties of fluids don’t vary with flow conditions.
 There is no heat transfer occurs through radiation.
 There is no heat generation within the fluids.
CFD analysis begins with creating geometry, followed by the meshing of the model. After
that, input data is provided, like material properties, etc., and then boundary conditions are
specified. After that, the solution is initialized to get a converged solution. Finally, post-
processing has been carried out to get the desired output results.
2.3. Model
Three-dimensional numerical simulations were carried out using Ansys Fluent 18.2 to solve
the governing equations for counter-flow heat exchanger, both flow and temperature fields, as
depicted in Fig. 1(a). The finite volume method (FVM) was used to discretize the governing
equations with appropriate boundary conditions. The upwind scheme was used to calculate
the convective terms at the control volume cell faces, while the SIMPLE algorithm was used
to link the pressure and velocity fields (pressure-velocity coupling). A variety of models are
available in ANSYS FLUENT to simulate the flow. In this analysis K-ε(epsilon) SST model
was used. As there is no phase change involved in this work, we considered a single-phase
model. The convergence criteria for differential equations that determine the convergence of
a solution have been set to10-8 for the energy equation and10-6 for the rest of the equations.

Fig. 1. (a) Computational domain, (b) description of the mesh type, and (c) boundary
conditions used in the concentric tube heat exchange. T. Salameh et al. International
Journal of Thermofluids 20 (2023) 100432

2.4. Boundary Conditions

The boundary conditions have been set according to the physical phenomenon as shown in
Fig. 1(c). Velocity inlet condition has been selected for the inlet condition of cold fluid and
hot fluid. Hot fluid inlet velocity was set to 6 L/s. The inlet temperature of hot nanofluid was
taken as 60 °C while the cold fluid (pure water) inlet temperature inside the outer tube at 25
°C. The inlet velocity was varied in such a way that the Reynolds number was set to 2000,
4000, 6000, 8000, 10000 and 12000. By varying the Reynolds number, the mass flow rate of
cold fluid changes accordingly. The gauge pressure was set to zero at outlet conditions.
2.5. Grid Independence
The type of mesh used in this study combined tetrahedron and sweep methods. The sweep
type has low count as it offers perfect alignment with the flow field during the numerical
simulation due to its high aspect ratio. Also, the boundary layer was resolved by using the
inflation layers adjacent to the wall of the inner and outer tubes, as shown in Fig. 1(b). Three
different numbers of grids with three different numbers of elements were used for the grid
independence study. These elements were 377,281, 522,567, and 909,708. The number of
elements 522,567 was selected after considering the changing of the results, such as
temperature, friction coefficient, and Nusselt number are less than one percentage.

3. Results and discussion

CFD analysis has been done using ANSYS Fluent 18.2. The following important results were
obtained.

Fig. 2. Comparison of the average Nusselt number between experimental [20,21] and
numerical results for different nanofluids (a) 0.05% volume fraction and (b) 0.2% volume
fraction. T. Salameh et al. International Journal of Thermofluids 20 (2023) 100432
3.1. Validation
The comparisons between the current study and some numerical and experimental work
obtained by [20,21] as shown in Fig. 2. The results for this study showed good agreement
with the previous mentioned work which validates our model.

Fig. 3. Contour plot of temperature for (a) CuO nanofluid (b) Al 2O3 nanofluid, and (c) TiO2
nanofluid. T. Salameh et al. International Journal of Thermofluids 20 (2023) 100432

3.2. Contours
The temperature contour for the three types of nanofluids is given in Fig. 3. The counter flow
configuration can be seen clearly in the figure where the cold flow enters from the left while
the hot flow enters from the right. The temperature was varying from 26.04°C to 61.69 °C, as
depicted in the legend of Fig. 3.

Fig. 4. Numerical results for the average Nusselt number ratio of nanofluid to pure water
using different nanofluids at various Reynolds numbers and volume fractions. T. Salameh et
al. International Journal of Thermofluids 20 (2023) 100432

3.3. Variation of Nusselt Number

Fig. 2 shows that the average Nusselt number increases significantly with an increase in the
Reynolds number. Also, with the increase in volume fraction, the average Nusselt number
increases for all values of the Reynolds number. CuO- water nanofluid exhibits the highest
average Nusselt number followed by Al2O3 and TiO2 nanofluids. This enhancement is more
clear for Reynolds numbers below 9000. As the Reynolds number increases above 9000,
using different nanofluids has a negligible effect on the average Nusselt number values.
Fig. 4 shows the graph of ratio of the average Nusselt number of nanofluids to pure water
using different nanofluids at various Reynolds numbers and volume fractions. It confirms that
nanofluids enhance heat transfer characteristics compared with pure water. Moreover, this
enhancement is more profound at Reynolds number of 2000 with CuO-water nanofluid
exhibiting the highest ratio. As the Reynolds number increases, the ratio of nanofluid average
Nusselt number to pure water decreases until significantly at the studied Reynolds number of
12,000 . This indicates that larger volume fractions should be used at high Reynolds numbers

Fig. 5. Numerical results for the overall heat transfer coefficient ratio of nanofluid to pure
water using different nanofluids at various Reynolds numbers and volume fractions.
T. Salameh et al. International Journal of Thermofluids 20 (2023) 100432

3.4. Variation of overall heat transfer coefficient

Fig. 5 shows the variation for the overall heat transfer coefficient ratio (Unf/Ub) of nanofluid
to pure water using different nanofluids at various Reynolds numbers and volume fractions.
From the graph, it is evident that this ratio is always larger than one. CuO nanofluid provided
the maximum heat transfer enhancement followed by Al2O3 and TiO2 nanofluids. Heat
transfer enhancement reduced with increasing Reynolds number.
3.5. Pressure Drop and Friction Factor
Fig. 6(a) shows that the pressure drop increases with an increase in Reynolds number. Here,
CuO–water nanofluid exhibits the highest pressure drop compared with other nanofluids.
This can be attributed to CuO-water nanofluid having the highest effective viscosity, as
shown in Table 1. The pressure drop of CuO-water nanofluid is significantly affected by
varying the volume fraction. Fig. 6(b) shows that the friction factor for all nanofluids
decreases with an increase in Reynolds number. The results show that the friction factor of
Al2O3 nanofluid has the lowest value compared with other nanofluids.
Fig. 6. Numerical results (a) Pressure drop and (b) average friction factor inside the inner
tube for pure water and CuO, Al2O3, and TiO2 nanofluids at 0.05% and 0.2% volume fraction.
T. Salameh et al. International Journal of Thermofluids 20 (2023) 100432

Fig. 7. Effect of varying the Reynolds number and volume fraction on the ratio of the
nanofluid friction factor to the pure water. T. Salameh et al. International Journal of
Thermofluids 20 (2023) 100432

Moreover, Fig. 7 shows that the average friction factor ratio for all nanofluids concerning the
Reynolds number is almost constant. CuO-water nanofluid exhibits the largest ratio of the
average friction factor. Also, as the volume fraction of nanofluid increases, the ratio of the
average friction factor increases for a fixed value of Reynolds number. This can also be
attributed to the increase in the viscosity.
4. Conclusion
The important conclusions drawn are:
 Nanofluids enhance heat transfer in concentric tube heat exchangers compared to pure
water. CuO nanofluid provides maximum enhancement.
 Heat transfer enhancement reduces at higher Reynolds numbers. Enhancement is
 more significant at low Reynolds numbers.
 Pressure drop and friction factor are higher for nanofluids. CuO nanofluid has the
highest pressure drop.
 CuO nanofluid demonstrates the best overall thermo-hydraulic performance for both
concentrations (0.05% and 0.2%). Performance index decreases with increasing
Reynolds number.
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