Investigation of Heat Transfer Performance of Hybrid and Single Magnetic Nanofluids in Porous Medium

Porous materials essentially raise the contact surface area between the working medium and the solid surface. Additionally, the nanoparticles uniformly distributed in the nanofluid also help to raise the effective thermal conductivity. Therefore, using nanofluid and porous material in thermal systems is attractive for researchers working on thermal performance. The aim of this work is to examine the thermal behavior of magnetic single and hybrid type nanofluid suspensions flowing in a channel partially filled with metal foam. For this aim, a series of experimental tests were carried out at five flow rates between 0.02 m/s and 0.1 m/s using deionized water (DI water), magnetite-based (Fe3O4/water) single nanofluid, and nickel ferrite-magnetite-based (NiFe2O4-Fe3O4/water) hybrid nanofluid in a channel partially filled with metal foams with pore densities of 10 and 30 PPI. According to the results, single and hybrid nanoparticles dispersed at 1 wt% in DI water improved heat transfer by 0.64% and 2.88%, respectively, at Re = 4000. Similarly, when the nanoparticle concentration was increased to 2 wt%, the heat transfer increase reached 2.018% for the single and 3.47% for the hybrid nanofluid.