AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF SURFACE ROUGHNESS AND SURFACTANT ON POOL BOILING OF NANOFLUIDS

Abstract

The use of nanofluids as heat transfer fluids has received a lot of attention from the heat transfer research community. Due to the increased thermal conductivity of nanofluids over their base fluids, the number of nanofluids scientific publications increased significantly in the past decade. The effects of the heated surface roughness, nanoparticles and surfactant concentrations on pool boiling of nanofluids have been thoroughly investigated. However, contradicting findings have been observed under what appeared to similar test conditions. In this experimental investigation, two boiling surfaces have been prepared with an average surface roughness of 6 and 60 nm using high precision machining. Alumina Oxide-Water based nanofluids have been used in this investigation. The initial nanoparticle size reported by the manufacturer is 10 nm. The nanoparticles concentration has been kept at 0.05 wt. %. A Sodium Dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) surfactant has been added to the nanofluids in order to improve its stability. Results showed that the nanofluids boiling performance depended on the boiling surface roughness. The heat transfer coefficient (HTC) obtained in the case of the smooth, mirror finished surface showed an enhancement of 205% with respect to pure water. This trend was reversed in the case of the rough surface which is believed to be due to significant nanoparticles deposition. The HTC obtained with the rough surface was 12% lower than that of pure water. The effect of the surfactant concentration on nanoparticles deposition has been investigated by changing the surfactant concentration from 0.1 to 1.0 wt. %. In the case of the rough surface, the increase of surfactant concentration was found to reduce the formation of the nanoparticles deposition layer. The HTC obtained with the higher surfactant concentration was increased by 46 %. The effect of nanoparticles concentration on the smooth surface shows an unexpected trend of 20 % reduction of the transfer rate of the nanofluids coupled with the increase of the nanoparticle concentration from 0.05 to 0.1 wt. %. However all concentrations showed heat transfer enhancement with respect to pure water. The minimum heat transfer coefficient ratio enhancement was 11 % using 0.1 wt. % nanofluids with respect to pure water. Since nanoparticles deposition has been observed and attributed to micro-layer evaporation, an investigation has been carried out to examine the nucleation process during the pure water and nanofluids pool boiling. The bubble growth rate in both cases was analyzed at different wall degrees of superheat ranging from 104.3 to 105.9 ºC. In addition, the bubble departure diameter and frequency have been measured and compared for both cases. The nanofluid bubble size was about 80 % smaller than that of pure water. The nanofluid bubble departure had almost constant frequency of 500 Hz over the range of wall superheats whereas the maximum bubble frequency in the case of pure water was 22.72 Hz.