Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Graphene/Water Nanofluid on the Heat Transfer of a Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchanger

The most common type of heat exchanger used in a variety of industrial applications is the shell-and-tube heat exchanger (STHE). In this work, the impact of graphene nanoplate (GNP)/water nanofluids at 0.01 wt.%, 0.03 wt.%, and 0.06 wt.% on the thermal efficiency, thermal performance factor, pressure drop, overall heat transfer, convective heat transfer coefficient (CVHTC), and heat transfer characteristics of a shell-and-tube heat exchanger was examined. For these experiments, a new STHE was designed and built. The novelty of this study is the use of GNPs/water nanofluids in this new STHE for the first time and the fully experimental investigation of the attributes of nanofluids. GNP properties were analysed and confirmed using analyses including XRD and TEM. Zeta potential, DLS, and camera images were used to examine the stability of nanofluids at various periods. The zeta potential of the nanofluids was lower than -27.8 mV, confirming the good stability of GNP/water nanofluids. The results illustrated that the experimental data for distilled water had a reasonably good agreement with Sieder-Tate correlation. The maximum enhancement in the CVHTC of nanofluid with 0.06 wt.% of GNP, was equal to 910 (W/m2K), an increase of 22.47%. Also, the efficiency of the heat exchanger for nanofluid at 0.06 wt.% improved by 8.88% compared with that of the base fluid. The heat transfer rate of the nanofluid at maximum concentration and volume flow rate was 3915 (J/kg.K), an improvement of 15.65% over the base fluid. The pressure drops increased as the flow rate and concentration of the nanofluid increased. Although increasing the pressure drop in tubes would increase the CVHTC, it would also increase the power consumption of the pump. In conclusion, nanofluid at 0.06 wt.% had good performance.