im

r-A., P.O0 MBStut

Keywords:

d codiemicng t

tration distribution is uniform. However, the two-phase modeling results show higher heat transfer

S (Micate vee devic

uid heat and uid ow behavior.There are many experimental studies for nanouids on macro

and micro-scales (e.g. Wen and Ding, 2004; Heris et al., 2006; Junget al., 2009; Wu et al., 2009). Wen and Ding (2004) investigated theheat transfer of an Al2O3water nanouid in the entrance region ofa 4.5 mm diameter copper tube under the constant heat ux con-ditions. Their measurements showed enhancement in heat transfer

by Wu et al. (2009). For channels with a hydraulic diameter of194.5 lm and an Al2O3water nanouid, they reported an increasein the Nusselt number with increasing particle concentration, Rey-nolds and Prandtl numbers, while the pressure drop increasedslightly when compared to pure water.

For the theoretical study of the pressure-driven nanouid heatand uid ow commonly homogenous (single-phase) and two-phase models are used. In homogeneous modeling it is assumedthat the particles and the base uid have the same temperatureand velocity and thus, the single-phase equations along with the

Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 2164543425; fax: +98 2166419736.

International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 32 (2011) 107116

Contents lists availab

of

.eE-mail address: abbassi@aut.ac.ir (A. Abbassi).amount of heat ux that should be taken away by a cooling systemto guarantee their appropriate performance. One possible way tocool these devises can be the use of so-called nanouids. A nano-uid is a suspension of nano-sized (10100 nm) metallic andnon-metallic solid particles in a conventional cooling liquid suchas water, ethylene glycol, or oil. The term nanouid for the rsttime was used by Choi (1995) for such a suspension. After that,many researchers focused on studying the thermophysical and alsoheat and uid ow properties of nanouids. Most of the studiesconcentrated on the modeling of the effective thermal conductivityof nanouids (e.g. Xuan et al., 2003; Koo and Kleinstreuer, 2004;Feng et al., 2007). Recently, researchers have focused on the nano-

(2006) studied CuO and alumina nanoparticles in water. They com-pared the experimental results with homogeneous model results(single-phase correlations with nanouid effective properties)and reported that the homogeneous modeling under-estimatesthe heat transfer enhancement, especially in higher volumeconcentrations.

Jung et al. (2009) did experiments for Al2O3water nanouids inrectangular microchannels. The particle diameter in their experi-ments was 170 nm. With only 1.8% of volume concentration theyreported a 32% increase of the heat transfer coefcient in compar-ison to single distilled water. Also, experiments on nanouid heattransfer in trapezoidal silicon microchannels have been performedNanouidMicrochannelTwo-phaseLaminarHeat transfer

1. Introduction

Emerging developments in MEMSystems) make it possible to fabricOn the other hand, these small scal0142-727X/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Inc. Adoi:10.1016/j.ijheatuidow.2010.08.001enhancement in comparison to the homogeneous single-phase model. Also, the heat transfer enhance-ment increases with increase in Reynolds number and nanoparticle volume concentration as well as withdecrease in the nanoparticle diameter, while the pressure drop increases only slightly.

2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

ro-Electro-Mechanical-ry small scale devices.es can generate a high

especially in the entrance region of the tube. They described thisbehavior as the particle migration effect (non-uniform nanoparti-cle volume concentration) that reduces the thermal boundary layerthickness. For an annular tube with a 6 mm inner diameter coppertube and a 32 mm outer diameter stainless steel tube, Heris et al.ative velocity and temperature of the phases are presented and it has been observed that the relativevelocity and temperature between the phases is very small and negligible and the nanoparticle concen-EulerianEulerian two-phase numerical sforced convection in a microchannel

Mohammad Kalteh a,b, Abbas Abbassi a,, Majid SaffaaDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Hafez AvebDepartment of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 560c Institute for Computational Physics, University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 4 March 2010Received in revised form 1 August 2010Accepted 5 August 2010

a b s t r a c t

In this paper, laminar forceheated microchannel is stunanouid ow inside theboth phases are solved usi

International Journal

journal homepage: wwwll rights reserved.ulation of nanouid laminar

vval a, Jens Harting b,c

. Box 15916-34311, Tehran, IranEindhoven, The Netherlands

tgart, Germany

nvection heat transfer of a copperwater nanouid inside an isothermallyd numerically. An Eulerian two-uid model is considered to simulate therochannel and the governing mass, momentum and energy equations forhe nite volume method. For the rst time, the detailed study of the rel-

le at ScienceDirect

Heat and Fluid Flow

lsev ier .com/ locate/ i jhf f

f HeNomenclature

A dened in Eq. (25)B dened in Eq. (24)Cp specic heat at constant pressure, J kg1 K1

Cd drag coefcientdp nanoparticle diameter, mDh hydraulic diameter, mFcol particleparticle interaction force, Pa m1

Fd drag force, Pa m1

Fvm virtual mass force, Pa m1

G particleparticle interaction modulus, Pah heat transfer coefcient based on the mean tempera-

ture, W m2 K1

hv volumetric heat transfer coefcient, W m3 K1

hp liquid-particle heat transfer coefcient, W m2 K1

H channel height, mk thermal conductivity, W m1 K1

L channel length, mNu Nusselt number (hDh/kl)Nu average Nusselt numberNup Particle Nusselt numberp pressure, PaP non-dimensional pressurePr liquid Prandtl numberq00 wall convective heat ux, W m2

Re Reynolds number (qluinDh/ll)ReH Reynolds number (qluinH/ll)Rep particle Reynolds number

ulql j~Vl~Vp jdpll

108 M. Kalteh et al. / International Journal oappropriate effective thermophysical properties (thermal conduc-tivity, viscosity, specic heat and density) for the nanouid aresolved. In this method, the accuracy of the models used as effectivethermophysical properties is very important. Most of the theoreti-cal studies in this eld are based on the homogeneous approach(e.g. Koo and Kleinstreuer, 2005; Li and Kleinstreuer, 2008; Santraet al., 2009). In addition to the pressure-driven nanouid ows, it ispossible to use electroosmotic transport for nanouids especiallyin the micro-scale. In this case, the thickness of the electrical dou-ble layer and effective electrical conductivity of the nanouid canaffect the nanouid heat transfer behavior (Chakraborty and Pad-hy, 2008; Chakraborty and Roy, 2008).

In despite of the homogeneous modeling, in the two-phasemodeling, the nanoparticle and the base uid are considered astwo different phases with different velocities and temperatures.In this method, the interactions between the phases are taken intoaccount in the governing equations. There are a few studies thatused two-phase approach to study nanouids. Behzadmehr et al.(2007) used a two-phase mixture model to study the turbulentnanouid convection inside a circular tube. Comparing with anexperimental study they reported that the two-phase results aremore precise than the homogeneous modeling results. However,they considered thermal equilibrium conditions (the same temper-ature) for the phases. Mirmasoumi and Behzadmehr (2008a) usedthe same method as in Behzadmehr et al. (2007) to study themixed convection of the nanouid in a tube. Also, Mirmasoumiand Behzadmehr (2008b) and Akbarinia and Laur (2009) investi-gated the nanoparticles size effect on the mixed convective heattransfer of a nanouid using the two-phase mixture method. Inboth studies an increase in heat transfer with a decrease in thenanoparticles size was reported. Bianco et al. (2009) modeled thenanouid ow and heat transfer inside a tube. They used both sin-

u, v velocity components in the x- and y-directions respec-tively, m s1U, V non-dimensional velocity in the x- and y-directionsrespectively

t time, sT temperature, Kx, y axial and vertical coordinates respectively, mx* non-dimensional axial length (xD1h Re

1Pr1)X, Y non-dimensional axial and vertical coordinates respec-

tively

Greek symbolsb friction coefcient, kg m3 s1

C dened in Eq. (23)h non-dimensional temperaturel viscosity, Pa sq density, kg m3

u volume concentrationx dened in Eq. (25)

Subscriptsb bulkeff effectivei phase index (=l, p)in inletl liquid phasem meannf nanouidp particle phasepw pure water

at and Fluid Flow 32 (2011) 107116gle-phase and two-phase methods. For the two-phase method,they implemented Lagrangian approach to model the particle mo-tion. They reported a maximum difference of 11% between the sin-gle and two-phase results. Kurowski et al. (2009) used threedifferent homogeneous, EulerianLagrangian and mixture methodsto simulate nanouid ow inside a minichannel. Their resultsshowed almost the same behavior for all the methods. Fard et al.(2010) studied the nanouid heat transfer inside a tube consider-ing both the single and two-phase methods. For a 0.2% copperwater nanouid, they reported that the average relative error be-tween the experimental data and single-phase model was 16%while for the two-phase method it was 8%. On the other hand, Lotet al. (2010) used homogeneous, two-phase Eulerian and mixturemodels for nanouid ow inside a tube. They reported that amongthese methods, the two-phase mixture method is more precisethan the others.

According to the literature, there is a non-uniform nanoparticlevolume concentration distribution in the entrance region (Wenand Ding, 2004) and the homogeneous model under-estimatesthe observed heat transfer enhancement in the experiments (Heriset al., 2006; Behzadmehr et al., 2007; Bianco et al., 2009; Fard et al.,2010; Lot et al., 2010). Thus, the two-phase modeling can be analternative method. On the other hand, the existing studies forthe two-phase method do not consider the temperature differencebetween the phases (Behzadmehr et al., 2007; Mirmasoumi andBehzadmehr, 2008a,b; Akbarinia and Laur, 2009) or do not presentdetailed results on the relative velocity and temperature betweenthe phases and the volume concentration distribution (Biancoet al., 2009; Fard et al., 2010). The amount of the relative velocityand temperature between the phases along with the nanoparticleconcentration distribution can provide an estimation of the accu-racy of the assuming nanouid as a homogeneous solution. On

w wall

the other hand, all the above mentioned two-phase studies are formacro-sized circular tubes and to the best of the knowledge of theauthors there is no such study for microchannels. So, this paperaims to study the nanouid laminar forced convection in a deeprectangular (parallel plate) microchannel with isothermally heatedwalls, using the EulerianEulerian two-phase model. To do this,mass, momentum and energy conservation equations for bothphases are solved with the iterative numerical methods. Thetwo-phase results are compared with the single-phase results fromthe literature and then the nanoparticle size, nanoparticle concen-tration and Reynolds number effects on the nanouid heat transferbehavior are studied. Also, the relative velocity and temperaturebetween the phases and the particle volume concentration distri-bution in the eld are investigated. To the best knowledge of theauthors, this is the rst paper reporting the detailed two-phasenanouid modeling in a microchannel that considers different

where x, y, u, v, q and u are axial and vertical direction, axial and

Also, subscripts l and p stand for liquid and particle phases,respectively. According to the volume concentration denition wehave

ul up 1 3

2.2. Momentum equations

Momentum equations in the x-direction are

@ulqlulul@x

@ulqlv lul@y

ul@p@x

@@x

ulll@ul@x

@@y

ulll@ul@y

Fdx Fvmx 4

and

M. Kalteh et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 32 (2011) 107116 109vertical velocity, density and volume concentration, respectively.velocity and temperatures for the phases.

2. Governing equations

The geometry of the present problem is shown in Fig. 1. It con-sists of a parallel plate microchannel with height 200 lm and thelength L is 100 times larger than the height (L/H = 100). The originof the Cartesian coordinate system is considered to be at the platesymmetry axis and only the top half of the channel is used fornumerical simulation. In this problem laminar nanouid ow thatis a mixture of water and copper nanoparticles enters the channelwith a uniform velocity and temperature and exchanges heat withthe isothermal microchannel walls.

Considering the laminar, steady state and two-dimensionalEulerianEulerian two-phase model for the nanouid, the govern-ing mass, momentum and energy equations for the particle andbase liquid phases can be written as follows (Fluent users guide,2006; Hao and Tao, 2004).

2.1. Continuity equations

@ulqlul@x

@ulqlv l@y

0 1

@upqpup@x

@upqpvp@y

0 2Fig. 1. Geometry of the isothermally-heated parallel plate microchannel with length L anleaves the channel while it is fully developed.@upqpupup@x

@upqpvpup@y

up@p@x

@@x

uplp@up@x

@@y

uplp@up@y

Fcolx

Fdx Fvmx 5

Here, p, l, (Fd)x, (Fvm)x and (Fcol)x are the pressure, viscosity, drag,virtual mass (added mass) and particleparticle interaction forcesin the x-direction, respectively. Due to the very small size of thenanoparticles, the lift force between the phases is neglected inthe present study.

Momentum equations in the y-direction can be written asfollows:

@ulqlulv l@x

@ulqlv lv l@y

ul@p@y

@@x

ulll@v l@x

@@y

ulll@v l@y

Fdy Fvmy 6

@upqpupvp@x

@upqpvpvp@y

up@p@y

@@x

uplp@vp@x

@@y

uplp@vp@y

Fcoly

Fdy Fvmy 7

where (Fd)y, (Fvm)y and (Fcol)y are the drag, virtual mass (addedmass)and particleparticle interaction forces in the y-direction, respec-tively. Due to the small size of the channel, the gravitational forceis neglected in the present study.d height H. Nanouid enters the channel with uniform velocity and temperature and

q

f HeThe drag force between the phases is calculated as

Fd b ~Vl ~Vp

8

where ~V is the velocity vector.The friction coefcient b is calculated according to the particle

volume concentration range. For very dilute two-phase ows withparticle diameter dp, the friction coefcient is (Syamlal and Gidas-pow, 1985)

b 34Cdul1ul

dpj~Vl ~Vpju2:65l 9

Eq. (9) is valid for two-phase ows with ul > 0.8 and Cd is thedrag coefcient and its magnitude depends on the particle Rey-nolds number:

Cd 24Rep

1 0:15Re0:697p Rep < 10000:44 Rep P 1000

(10

where

Rep ulqlj~Vl ~Vpjdpll

11

The virtual mass force is proportional to the relative accelera-tion of the two phases and is written as (Drew and Lahey, 1993)

Fvm 0:5upqlDDt

~Vl ~Vp 12

In Eq. (12) D is the material derivative, such that, for the steadystate case, the convective terms of the material derivative areretained.

The particleparticle interaction force is calculated as (Bouillardet al., 1989)

Fcol Gul~rul 13Here, G is the particleparticle interaction modulus and it is cal-

culated as

G 1:0 exp600ul 0:376 14Eqs. (8)(14) are not correlations developed for nano-sized

particles. But, since there are no such correlations for nano-sizedparticles, it is assumed that it is reasonable to use them for nano-particles. Also, the importance of drag, virtual mass and particleparticle interaction forces in nanouid will be discussed inSection 6.1.

2.3. Energy equations

Considering the base uid and the particle phase as incompress-ible uids, and neglecting the viscous dissipation and radiation, theenergy equation is written as

@

@xulqlulcpl Tl

@

@yulqlmlcpl Tl

@@x

ulkeff ;l@Tl@x

@@y

ulkeff ;l@Tl@y

hvTl Tp 15

@

@xupqpupcppTp

@

@yupqpmpcppTp

@@x

upkeff ;p@Tp@x

@@y

upkeff ;p@Tp@y

hvTl Tp 16

where cp, T, keff and hv are the heat capacity at constant pressure,

110 M. Kalteh et al. / International Journal otemperature, effective thermal conductivity and volumetric inter-phase heat transfer coefcient, respectively. For mono-dispersedspherical particles hv can be calculated fromkb;l 1 1ul kl 21

kb;p 1ul

qxA 1xCkl 22

and

C 21 BA BA 1

A 1 BA 2 ln AB

B 1

1 BA B 1

2

( )23

with

B 1:25 1ulul

109

24

For spherical particles one can use

A kpkl

and x 7:26 103 25

Eqs. (18)(25) are not correlations developed for nano-sizedparticles. But, due to the lack of such correlations for nano-sizedparticles, they are used in the present study.

2.4. Nusselt number denition

The Nusselt number is dened based on the temperature differ-ence between the microchannel wall and the nanouid mean(bulk) temperature:

Nu hDhkl

q00Dh=klTw Tm 26

where h, Dh, q00 are the convective heat transfer coefcient, micro-channel hydraulic diameter and the wall convective heat transferux, respectively. Also, subscripts w andm stand for wall and mean,respectively. The mean temperature for a two-phase uid can becalculated from (Boulet and Moissette, 2002)

Tm Pp

i1RRqiuicpiTidAPp

i1RRqiuicpidA

27

where the integration is performed on the channel cross section. Fortwo-phase ow according to Eqs. (15) and (16), wall convectiveheat transfer ux can be calculated as hv 61uldp hp 17

where hp is the uidparticle heat transfer coefcient that shouldbe calculated from empirical correlations. In the present study theuidparticle heat transfer coefcient is calculated based on theWakao and Kaguei (1982):

Nup hpdpk1 2 1:1Re0:6p Pr

13 18

Here Pr is the base liquid Prandtl number.The effective thermal conductivities for liquid and particle

phases are estimated as (Kuipers et al., 1992)

keff ;1 kb;lul; 19

keff ;p kb;pup20

where

at and Fluid Flow 32 (2011) 107116q00 ulkeff ;l@Tl@y

w

upkeff ;p@Tp@y

w

28

tion is assumed for both phases. For liquid molecules the mean free

ized using the nite volume method on the upper half of the

non-uniform grid is employed in the computational domain. The

particle and liquid phases. Also, for accelerating the convergence

ature) in all control volumes is calculated. The sum of the scaled

4. Grid-independence study

To check for the independency of the results from the numberof grid points used, a grid independency study is done by consider-ing the amount of the calculated average Nusselt number. To dothis, different numbers of grid points are used in the x- and y-direc-tions. The results are shown in Table 1, where the ow Reynoldsnumber is 1500. According to this study, the number of the gridpoints in x- and y-directions are considered 500 and 30 respec-tively in the present study.

5. Code validation

Due to the lack of experimental data for nanouid ow in a par-allel plate microchannel, the calculated average Nusselt numbersfor the special case of pure water ow (up = 0.0) at different Rey-nolds numbers are compared to corresponding available data inthe literature in order to check the accuracy of the written com-puter code. For a single-phase uid ow in an isothermally-heatedparallel plate channel, the average Nusselt number is calculated as(Ebadian and Dong, 1998)

1000 10.843 10.638 1.93

f Heat and Fluid Flow 32 (2011) 107116 111absolute residuals for every parameter is restricted to be smallerthan 106. For convergence criteria up to 109, the calculatedof the SIMPLE algorithm, the under-relaxation for velocity andpressure is used. For convergence criteria, the sum of the scaledabsolute residual for every parameter (mass, velocity and temper-is solved iteratively using the line by line method (Patankar, 1980;Versteeg and Malalasekera, 1995) and for solving the pressurevelocity coupling the well-known SIMPLE (Semi-Implicit Methodfor Pressure-Linked Equations) algorithm of Patankar (1980) isused. To use the SIMPLE algorithm, the pressure-correction equa-tion is derived by combining the mass conservation equations forgrids are ner close to the wall and also in the channel entranceregion using the cosine weighting function for control volumelength and height. The power-law scheme (Patankar, 1980;Versteeg and Malalasekera, 1995) is used for the convectiondiffusion term discretization. The set of the discretized equationschannel (Patankar, 1980; Versteeg and Malalasekera, 1995). Apath is 0.11 nm, so that the channel hydraulic diameter should besmaller than 1 lm to be in the slip region (Morini, 2005). There-fore, for both of the phases the no-slip boundary condition at thewalls is appropriate for the present study.

For thermal boundary conditions, it is assumed that the nano-uid enters the channel with 293 K and the isothermal walls havea temperature of 303 K. For the channel outlet, the outow bound-ary condition is considered for both phases.

3. Numerical method

The non-dimensional form of the mass, momentum and energyconservation equations for liquid and particle phases along withthe interphase correlations and boundary conditions are discret-According to the local Nusselt number, the average Nusseltnumber is

Nu 1L

Z L0Nudx 29

2.5. Non-dimensionalization

Before the solution, all the governing equations are converted tonon-dimensional form, using the following non-dimensionalparameters:

X xDh

; Y yDh

; Ui uiuin ; Vi v iuin

; P p pinqlu2in

;

hi Ti TinTw Tin 30

where i = l, p stands for the liquid and the particle phases.

2.6. Boundary conditions

Both phases enter the channel at the inlet with the same uni-form axial velocity that is specied according to the ow Reynoldsnumber. At the channel outlet, outow velocity boundary condi-

M. Kalteh et al. / International Journal oaverage Nusselt number remains unchanged up to the third digitof the decimal. Thus, the convergence criterion is selected to be106 in the present study.Nu 7:55 0:024x1:14

1 0:0358Pr0:17x0:64 31

where x xD1h Re1Pr1 is the non-dimensional axial length.Table 2 shows the calculated average Nusselt number in the

numerical simulation, the corresponding results from Eq. (31)and the difference between the two results for a wide range of Rey-nolds number. The results show that the agreement between thepresent numerical solution results and the existing solution fromEq. (31) is very good especially for smaller Reynolds numbers.According to Table 2 for lower Reynolds numbers the deviation isless than 1% and it is less than 4% for Re = 2000. After checkingfor the accuracy of the computer code, in the following section heattransfer and pressure drop results for different Reynolds numbers,nanoparticle diameters and concentrations are presented.

6. Results and discussion

Since in the present study the particle phase is considered as acontinuum, its viscosity lp has to be obtained. In fact, due to the

Table 1Grid-independency study results for pure water ow (up = 0.0) and Re = 1500.

No. of grid points in x-direction

No. of grid points in y-direction

Average Nusselt numberat the wall

150 10 12.252300 20 12.155600 40 12.122250 15 12.182500 30 12.130

1000 60 12.116

Table 2Comparison between average Nusselt number results from numerical simulationsand Ebadian and Dong (1998) results for pure water ow at different Reynoldsnumbers.

Re Present study Ebadian and Dong (1998) Deviation (%)

20 7.66 7.621 0.5150 7.756 7.739 0.22

100 7.924 7.934 0.13500 9.299 9.288 0.121500 12.13 11.775 3.012000 13.238 12.775 3.62

dp = 100 nm and different term conditions. According to Table 4virtual mass and particleparticle interaction forces do not haveany effect on the average Nusselt number. But, the drag force af-fects the average Nusselt number slightly. Also, the drag force ef-fect on the average Nusselt number increases with an increase inthe nanoparticle volume concentration. So, it is possible to neglectthe virtual mass and particleparticle interaction forces for nano-uid in the mathematical modeling.

6.2. Comparison with homogeneous model results

In this section, the two-phase modeling results are compared tothe homogeneous modeling results of Santra et al. (2009). They re-ported average Nusselt numbers in different conditions for 100 nmcopperwater nanouid owing inside a parallel plate channel.They used the channel height as a characteristic length scale to de-ne Reynolds number (i.e., ReH) and Nusselt numbers. Also, theyused the temperature difference between the wall and the inletuid to dene the heat transfer coefcient (in despite of Eq.(26)). So, to be able to compare the present two-phase results withthe homogeneous modeling results of Santra et al. (2009), all thepresent results in this section are based to their denitions. Fig. 2depicts the two-phase modeling results in comparison with thehomogeneous modeling results for ReH = 100 and 100 nm particles.It can be seen from Fig. 2 that the two-phase modeling resultsshow higher heat transfer enhancement in comparison to homoge-neous modeling results. Also, the heat transfer enhancement in-creases non-linearly with increase in nanoparticle volume

Table 3Sensitivity study of the average Nusselt num-ber on the particle phase viscosity for Re = 100,up = 0.01 and dp = 100 nm.

Particle viscosity(Pa s)

Average Nusseltnumber

0.01 11.6740.005 11.6750.002 11.658

ent (

%) 35

40

Present StudyHomogeneous Model of Santra et al. (2009)

ReH=100, dp=100 nm

112 M. Kalteh et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 32 (2011) 107116lack of experimental data, the solid viscosity for a liquidsolid two-phase mixture is not available. So, for the rst degree of approxi-mation the following method is adopted in the present study:The corresponding pressure drop and the average Nusselt numberof a highly dilute nanouid with volumetric concentration of0.00001 (which is quite close to pure water), is compared with thatof pure water, for Re = 1500. Using the trial and error method, thevalue of viscosity in the solid phase of the highly dilute nanouid ischanged up to a point where the pressure drop and the averageNusselt number of the highly dilute nanouid and the pure waterare matched. In doing so, the viscosity of the solid phase reaches avalue of 1.38 103 Pa s. Under such conditions, the difference be-tween the pressure and the average Nusselt number of the highlydilute nanouid and that of pure water are 0% and 1.1%, respec-tively. In order to investigate the effect of Reynolds number ofthe ow, the same method of comparison between the pressuredrop and the average Nusselt number of the highly dilute nanouidand the pure water is made, under the condition of very low Rey-nolds number (equal to 100). Under these circumstances, the dif-ference between the pressure drop and the average Nusseltnumber correspond to 0.04% and 1.4%, respectively. It can be con-cluded that the viscosity of the solid phase is independent of theReynolds number. Also, Table 3 shows the sensitivity study of aver-age Nusselt number on the solid viscosity magnitude for Re = 100,up = 0.01 and dp = 100 nm. As can be seen from Table 3 changingthe solid viscosity, the amount of the average Nusselt numberchanges slightly. i.e., when the solid viscosity changes three ordersof magnitude (from 0.01 to 0.00001) the average Nusselt numberremains unchanged up to the rst digit of the decimal. So, it canbe concluded that the results are not very sensitive to the solid vis-cosity and it is not critical to know the exact magnitude for particleviscosity. With these discussions, the particle viscosity is consid-

3

0.00138 11.6590.001 11.6480.0008 11.660.0002 11.6550.00005 11.6510.00001 11.663ered to be 1.38 10 Pa s in the present study.

6.1. Importance of the terms in the momentum equation

There are three interphase forces in the momentum equation(i.e. drag, virtual mass and particleparticle interaction forces).Table 4 shows the average Nusselt number for Re = 300,

Table 4Effect of the different terms in the momentum equation on the average Nusselt num

Volume concentration(%)

Considering allterms

Neglecting the dragterm

Negterm

1 12.343 12.385 12.32 14.068 14.151 14.03 15.507 15.637 15.54 16.818 16.998 16.85 18.051 18.292 18.0ber for Re = 300, dp = 100 nm and different volume concentrations.

lecting the particleparticle interaction Neglecting the virtual massterm

43 12.34368 14.06807 15.507

Nanoparticle volume concentration

Aver

age

Nus

selt

num

ber e

nhan

cem

0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.050

5

10

15

20

25

30

Fig. 2. Comparison of percentage enhancement in average Nusselt number withrespect to pure water ow for homogeneous and two-phase models at ReH = 100and different nanoparticle volume concentrations. Two-phase results show higherheat transfer enhancement in comparison to homogeneous results.18 16.81851 18.051

concentration for two-phase modeling results, while it is almostlinear for homogeneous modeling results. For instance, for 0.05nanoparticle volume concentration, two-phase modeling shows

particle distribution also has been reported by Akbarinia and Laur(2009) for a curved tube. Thus, considering the nanouid as ahomogeneous solution seems to be reasonable. Fig. 3 shows the ef-

Table 5Percentage increase in average Nusselt number with respect to pure water ow for homogeneous model simulations of Santra et al. (2009) and two-phase models at differentReynolds numbers and nanoparticle volume concentrations. Two-phase results show higher heat transfer enhancement in comparison to the homogeneous modeling results.

up (%) ReH = 500 ReH = 1000 ReH = 1500

Present study Santra et al. (2009) Present study Santra et al. (2009) Present study Santra et al. (2009)

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.00.5 20.75917 3.21628 20.90864 3.26732 20.94575 3.303071.0 29.31589 6.40564 29.5805 6.51014 29.62227 6.58251.5 35.96397 9.56952 36.36213 9.72955 36.42431 9.838942.0 41.64701 12.70968 42.21522 12.9274 42.30332 13.074152.5 46.75102 15.82767 47.52114 16.10541 47.62851 16.289763.0 51.49046 18.92487 52.42912 19.26517 52.58449 19.487273.5 55.84388 22.00248 57.05521 22.40813 57.25646 22.668084.0 60.02573 25.06157 61.49892 25.53565 61.70122 25.833474.5 64.07892 28.10305 65.7105 28.64899 66.01818 28.984675.0 67.76753 31.12774 69.88891 31.74931 70.19313 32.12279

opa

M. Kalteh et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 32 (2011) 107116 11332.6% heat transfer enhancement, while it is 19% for homogeneousmodeling results. For quantitative comparisons between the two-phase and homogeneous modeling results for different Reynoldsnumbers the data are collected in Table 5. The same behavior asFig. 2 can be seen for other Reynolds numbers in Table 5. Thisobservation also has been reported by previous two-phase model-ing studies (Behzadmehr et al., 2007; Bianco et al., 2009; Fard et al.,2010; Lot et al., 2010). One reason for this behavior can be relatedto the accuracy of the nanouid thermophysical property modelsthat are used in the homogeneous modeling.

6.3. Effect of the nanoparticles on the velocity and temperature eld

Two-phase simulation results show that the relative velocityand temperature between the phases is very small and negligible.For instance, for Re = 100 and 0.01 nanoparticle volume concentra-tion, the relative velocity in almost the full computation eld is ofthe order of 106 or smaller and in a very small region close to theentrance it is of the order of 104. For the temperature difference,in almost the entire ow eld it is of order 104 and in the verysmall region close to the channel entrance it is of order 102. Also,the results show that the nanoparticle volume concentration dis-tribution is uniform in the entire ow eld. Such a result for nano-

0.50.90.25

nan1.2

.4

Y

0 10 200

0.5

1.21.3

Y

0 10 200

0.25base liq

0.50.9

1.2

.3

Y

0 10 200

0.25pure

Fig. 3. Velocity contour lines for pure water (bottom plot) and nanouid (base liquidNanoparticles affect the velocity prole slightly and the relative velocity between the nfect of nanoparticles on the velocity eld for the Re = 1500 andup = 0.01 case. In Fig. 3 the bottom contour lines show the velocityeld for pure water ow in the computational domain, while themiddle and the top ones show the velocity eld for base liquidand nanoparticle phases in the nanouid. From Fig. 3 it can be seenthat the effect of nanoparticle on the velocity prole is very smalland it slightly increases the hydrodynamic entrance length. Thisbehavior is expectable due to very small size and concentrationof the nanoparticles. This is the reason for a small increase in pres-sure drop for a nanouid in comparison to the pure water. Accord-ing to the velocity contour lines for base liquid and nanoparticlephases in the nanouid in Fig. 3, it is clear that the relative velocitybetween the phases is very small and negligible.

Fig. 4 shows the effect of nanoparticles on the temperature eldfor the Re = 1500 and up = 0.01 case. In this gure the temperaturecontour line for pure water (the bottom plot) is compared to tem-perature contour lines for base liquid (middle plot) and nanoparti-cle (top plot) phases in the nanouid. According to Fig. 4nanoparticles increase the thermal boundary layer developmentconsiderably. This can be interpreted as increase in the thermalconductivity of the uid due to the presence of the nanoparticlesand as a result an increase in the heat transfer rate betweenthe nanouid and the microchannel wall. Also, the very small

rticle phase1.3

X30 40 50

0.9

X30 40 50

uid phase

1.2

X30 40 50

water

phase in middle plot and nanoparticle phase in top plot) at Re = 1500, up = 0.01.anoparticles and base liquid is very small and negligible.

ticle volume concentration for all Reynolds numbers. This corre-

0.010.1

0.3

0.5

Y

0 10 200

0.25particle

0.01

0.01

0.1

10.3

X

Y

0 10 20 30 40 500

0.25base liqu

0.010.1 0.3

0.5

X

Y

0 10 20 30 40 500

0.25pure water

Fig. 4. Temperature contour lines for pure water (bottom plot) and nanouid (base liquid phase in middle plot and nanoparticle phase in top plot) at Re = 1500, up = 0.01.Nanoparticles cause the temperature boundary layer to develop faster while the relative temperature between the nanoparticle and the base liquid phases is very small andnegligible.

erag

e N

usse

lt nu

mbe

r

14

16

18

20

22

240%1%2%3%4%5%

114 M. Kalteh et al. / International Journal of Hesponds to the results reported by previous studies (e.g. Junget al., 2009; Wu et al., 2009). This behavior is expectable sincethe nanoparticles have a very small effect on the velocity eld asdifference between the temperature proles for base uid and thenanoparticle phases is clear in Fig. 4.

6.4. Effect of particle volume concentration on heat and uid ow

Fig. 5 depicts the effect of varying the particle volume concen-tration on the pressure drop for 100 nm particles. As it can be seen,the pressure drop increases slightly with increase of the nanopar-presented in the previous section. For instance, for Re = 1000 andup = 0.01, the percentage increase in pressure drop in comparison

Re

Non

-dim

ensio

nal p

ress

ure

drop

400 800 1200 1600

5

10

15

20

2530

0%2%3%5%

Fig. 5. Non-dimensional pressure drop versus Reynolds number for differentnanoparticle volume concentrations (dp = 100 nm). The pressure drop increasesslightly with an increase of the nanoparticle volume concentration.X30 40 50

phase

id phase

at and Fluid Flow 32 (2011) 107116to pure water is 1.99%. This is one of the advantages of using nano-particles rather than millimeter or micrometer sized particles.

Fig. 6 shows the particle volume concentration and ow Rey-nolds number effect on the average Nusselt number for 100 nmparticles. It can be seen that the average Nusselt number increaseswith an increase in the nanoparticle volume concentration as wellas an increase in the ow Reynolds number. By comparing Figs. 5and 6 it is obvious that the increase in the Nusselt number is muchhigher than the increase in the pressure drop. So, this shows thatnanouids can be used as efcient working uids in cooling sys-tems. According to Fig. 6, increasing the Reynolds number andthe nanoparticle volume concentration increases the heat transferamount due to higher convection effects and higher nanoparticle

Re

Av

200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 16008

10

12

Fig. 6. Average Nusselt number Nu versus Reynolds number for differentnanoparticle volume concentrations (dp = 100 nm). The average Nusselt numberincreases with an increase of the Reynolds number and the nanoparticle volumeconcentration.

mehr, 2008b; Anoop et al., 2009; Akbarinia and Laur, 2009). Anoop

Re

Nu n

f/N

upw

200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 16001.2

1.3

1.4

1.5

1.6

1.7

1.8

1.9

2

2.1

2.2 1%2%3%4%5%

Fig. 7. Nanouid average Nusselt number normalized by the pure water averageNusselt number versus Reynolds number for different particle concentrations and

M. Kalteh et al. / International Journal of Heparticipation in increasing the effective thermal conductivity of thenanouids, respectively. This behavior is in agreement with theexperimental study of Wu et al. (2009) and the numerical studyof Li and Kleinstreuer (2008) for microchannels.

Fig. 7 shows the nanouid average Nusselt number normalizedby the corresponding Nusselt number for pure water ow. Fromthe gure it can be seen that for every Reynolds number, an in-crease in nanoparticle volume concentration increases the averageNusselt number ratio. This behavior is expected since the highernanoparticle concentration increases the thermal conductivity ofthe nanouid and thus causes an increase in the heat transfer rate.Also, Fig. 7 shows that for the same nanoparticle volume concen-

dp = 100 nm. The normalized average Nusselt number decreases slightly with anincrease in the Reynolds number.tration, with an increase in Reynolds number, the average Nusseltnumber ratio decreases slightly. In other words, the effect of a

the nanouid as a homogeneous solution is reasonable.

Nanoparticle volume concentration

Aver

age

Nus

selt

num

ber e

nhan

cem

ent (

%)

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.0540

50

60

70

80

90

100

110

120

100 nm70 nm50 nm30 nm

Fig. 8. Average Nusselt number enhancement in comparison to pure water owversus nanoparticle volume concentration for different nanoparticle diameters andRe = 500. The effect of the size of the nanoparticles is more pronounced for highernanoparticle volume concentrations.The heat transfer enhancement results for two-phase modelingshow higher magnitudes in comparison to the homogeneous mod-eling results. Such an observation also reported by other researches(Behzadmehr et al., 2007; Bianco et al., 2009; Fard et al., 2010; Lotet al., 2010). Thus, under-estimation of the heat transfer enhance-et al. (2009) reported an increase in heat transfer enhancementwith a decrease in particle size for experimental study of the alu-mina-water nanouid ow in the developing region of a tube withnanoparticle diameters 45 nm and 150 nm. But, He et al. (2007)experimentally studied the TiO2 nanoparticle size effect on theheat transfer rate inside a tube. They performed the experimentsfor 95, 145 and 210 nm particles with 0.006 particle volume con-centrations. Their heat transfer rate results did not show sensitivityto the nanoparticle size. They suggested a particle migration effectcausing a depletion layer that is created due to migration of the lar-ger particles to the channel center to explain this behavior. How-ever, the continuum method used in the present study is notable to resolve a very small depletion layer of the order of the par-ticle diameter close to the wall and the results show a uniformnanoparticle volume concentration distribution in the computa-tional eld.

7. Conclusions

Pressure drop and heat transfer due to copperwater nanouidow inside an isothermally-heated parallel plate microchannel isstudied numerically for a wide range of Reynolds numbers, nano-particle volume concentrations and nanoparticle diameters. To dothis, the nanouid ow is modeled using the Eulerian two-uidmodel. In this method, the difference between the velocity andtemperature for liquid and nanoparticle phases are consideredand the governing equations for both phases are solved numeri-cally using the nite volume method. It is observed that the rela-tive velocity and temperature for base liquid and nanoparticlephases are very small and negligible. Thus, the liquid and the nano-particles have almost the same velocity and temperature. Also, thenanoparticle volume concentration distribution is uniform in thecomputational domain. Therefore we conclude that consideringspecied amount of nanoparticles (constant nanoparticle volumeconcentration) on enhancing the heat transfer ratio is larger forthe lower Reynolds numbers. For instance, atup = 0.01, the averageNusselt number ratio is 1.45 and 1.34 for Re = 200 and Re = 1600,respectively.

6.5. Effect of the nanoparticle diameter on heat transfer

Fig. 8 depicts the nanoparticle size effect on the amount of theheat transfer enhancement in comparison to pure water ow, atdifferent volume concentrations and for Re = 500. It can be seenthat an increase of the volume concentration and a decrease ofthe nanoparticle diameter increases the heat transfer enhance-ment. According to Fig. 8, the increase in heat transfer enhance-ment with a decrease in the nanoparticle size is not verypronounced especially for lower volume concentrations, since theparticle sizes considered here are at the same order of magnitude.For instance, for a nanouid with 0.01 nanoparticle volume con-centration, for 100 nm and 30 nm particle sizes, the enhancementin heat transfer is 40.43% and 42.47%, respectively. The increase inheat transfer rate with a decrease in particle size was also reportedby other researchers (Heris et al., 2007; Mirmasoumi and Behzad-

at and Fluid Flow 32 (2011) 107116 115ment by homogeneous modeling seems to be related to the insuf-cient accuracy of the nanouid thermophysical property modelsthat are used in the homogeneous modeling. Also, the pressure

drop for nanouids is slightly higher than the pressure drop for thepure water ow, while the average Nusselt number increases withincrease in the Reynolds number and particle volume concentra-tion. For the same nanoparticle volume concentration, the averageNusselt number ratio is higher for lower Reynolds numbers. Keep-ing all the other parameters constant, heat transfer enhancement ishigher for the nanouids with smaller nanoparticle sizes. However,this effect is not very pronounced at low nanoparticle volume con-centrations. Also, the most important advantage of this method incomparison to homogenous modeling is that there is no need foreffective thermophysical models for the nanouid.

Acknowledgements

The rst author would like to acknowledge the Ministry of Sci-ence, Research and Technology of the Islamic Republic of Iran for

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116 M. Kalteh et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 32 (2011) 107116nancial support to perform the research at the Eindhoven Univer-sity of Technology. The authors also like to thank Anton Darhuberfor fruitful discussions.

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EulerianEulerian two-phase numerical simulation of nanofluid laminar forced convection in a microchannelIntroductionGoverning equationsContinuity equationsMomentum equationsEnergy equationsNusselt number definitionNon-dimensionalizationBoundary conditions

Numerical methodGrid-independence studyCode validationResults and discussionImportance of the terms in the momentum equationComparison with homogeneous model resultsEffect of the nanoparticles on the velocity and temperature fieldEffect of particle volume concentration on heat and fluid flowEffect of the nanoparticle diameter on heat transfer

ConclusionsAcknowledgementsReferences