Study of heat transfer characteristics of Al2O3 nanoparticles in heat pipes

Abstract

This project deals with the study of heat transfer characteristics of aluminium oxide nanoparticles in heat pipe. A heat pipe is a simple heat transfer device that can transfer large amount of heat from the evaporator to the condenser. In this study, the concept of heat transfer will be applied in order to analyse heat characteristics of the nanofluid. This project only concentrates on thermosyphon. The main objective of this project is to study thermal enhancement of the nanofluid and compared it with the base fluid. For this project, a test rig will be fabricated and the nanofluid will be prepared using aluminium oxide and water as the nanoparticle and base fluid respectively. Steps and processes regarding the fabrication of the test rig, preparation of nanofluid and the results from the experiment has been discussed in detail. The results showed the performance of the thermosyphon is enhanced with the presence of nanoparticles in the working fluid. The specific heat capacity decreases as the concentration of nanoparticles in working fluid increases. The efficiency of the thermosyphon is also improved with using nanofluid as the working fluid.