Investigation of heat transfer in wavy micro-heat exchanger using cryogenic nanofluids

Miniature devices such as micro-reactor and electronic components require compact and effective cooling system to dissipate high heat flux from working system. Micro-heat exchanger is suitable for this purpose. In this study, the heat transfer and pressure drop analysis in wavy circular pipe with different cryogenic nanofluids are numerically analysed by different volume fraction (1%-5%). Cryogenic base fluid LN₂ along with Al₂O₃, CuO, SiO₂ are focused on this numerical study and fluid is considered as incompressible, steady, and turbulent. This study focuses on evaluating the cooling performance of straight and wavy micro-heat exchanger by modelling the heat transfer model in ANSYS fluent. Nusselt number, pressure drop, base temperature, Heat Transfer Coefficient (HTC) and Thermal performance factor are used as performance parameter for comparing nanofluids performance. The relation between HTC, Reynolds number and amplitude of waviness has been established. (author)