A numerical investigation of mango leaves-water nanofluid under laminar flow regime

Abstract

Nanofluids are solid-liquid composites which show higher convective heat transfer performance than conventional heat transfer fluids. However, most of the nanoparticles used are metallic oxides which are known to be toxic both to the environment and humans. Hence, the study of bio-nanomaterial to which the environment is naturally exposed is an important study. These bio-materials are the additives to the base fluid. Mango leaves-water nanofluid is the nanofluid being studied under laminar flow conditions in a horizontal pipe. The multi-phase mixture model was used to simulate the nanofluid behavior. ANSYS Fluent 18.2 finite volume commercial code was used to discretize and solve the governing equations of flow and energy with residuals set to 10-6 for each governing equation. The Semi-Implicit method for pressure linked equations algorithm [SIMPLE] was used for pressure-velocity coupling. It was observed that the local heat transfer coefficient always decreased with the axis location. A 12% increase of the average heat transfer coefficient was observed for 3% volume fraction of mango leaves-water nanofluid in comparison to the base fluid. Hence there are great prospects for the use of these fluids as heat transfer fluids it being superior to the base fluid in terms of heat transfer characteristics.

Keywords: Bio-materials, Nanofluid, Numerical modeling, Heat transfer enhancement, mixture mode