An Experimental Study on Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Ethanol/Polyalphaolefin Nanoemulsion Flowing Through Circular Minichannels

This work experimentally studied the convective flow and heat transfer characteristics of a novel nanostructured heat transfer fluid: “ethanol/polyalphaolefin nanoemulsion” flowing through 12 circular minichannels of 1-mm diameter each. Ethanol/polyalphaolefin nanoemulsion is a thermodynamically stable system formed by dispersing ethanol into a mixture of “polyalphaolefin (PAO)” and surfactants. In this study, ethanol/PAO nanoemulsion is used as the working fluid to study the effect of ethanol nanodroplets on its convective flow and heat transfer characteristics. In addition, the effect of flow regime on its heat transfer is examined. It is found that using ethanol/PAO nanoemulsion fluids can improve convective heat transfer compared to that of pure PAO under both single- and two-phase flow regimes. For single-phase flow, there is no significant difference in Nusselt number between ethanol/PAO nanoemulsion and pure PAO in laminar flow regime. However, when entering transition flow regime, the ethanol/PAO nanoemulsion fluid showed a substantial increase in Nusselt number. Meanwhile, there is an increase in pressure drop and early onset of the laminar-turbulent transitional region for the ethanol/PAO nanoemulsion compared to pure PAO. The heat transfer coefficient of ethanol/PAO nanoemulsion can be further enhanced when the ethanol nanodroplets undergo phase change, which is hypothesized that such an effect is likely related to the enhanced interfacial thermal transport between the nanodroplets and base fluid under elevated temperature and the latent heat of phase changeable nanodroplets inside nanoemulsion. Further studies are needed to fully explore the convective heat transfer properties of nanoemulsion fluids.