Optimizing Effectiveness of Double Pipe Heat Exchanger Using Nanofluid and Different Porous Fins Arrangement

Abstract A numerical study is carried out to investigate the effect of porous fins in counter-flow Double Pipe Heat Exchanger (DPHE). Four DPHE with different porous fin arrangements is simulated for varying Darcy number, fin height, and the number of fins and compared with the conventional DPHE with no porous fins. The Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer equation is employed to model the flow in the porous fins considering fixed Re = 100. Al2O3-H2O nanofluid and water are used as hot and cold fluids respectively. Stainless steel is used as porous material with a porosity of 0.65. Results are evaluated in terms of effectiveness and Performance Evaluation Criterion (PEC). The effectiveness of the heat exchanger is used to analyze the heat transfer characteristics whereas the PEC is used to analyze the heat transfer characteristics considering pressure losses also. We evaluated maximum enhancement in thermal performance using effectiveness analysis and through PEC study we evaluated optimal effectiveness and corresponding design parameters. It is shown that utilizing porous fins in DPHE enhances the heat transfer by 134.3%. However, along with enhancement in heat transfer, the pressure losses also enhance which makes the application of porous fin non-viable. Therefore, using the PEC study we obtained optimal design parameters (Da = 10−3, hf = 4 cm, and n = 30) which adapts porous fin viable with enhancement in heat transfer by 66.38%.