Characteristics of heat transfer and flow of Al₂O₃/water nanofluid in a spiral-coil tube for turbulent pulsating flow

In the past two decades, enhancement of heat transfer characteristics of original fluid using nanofluids has been proposed by a large number of researchers. In this paper, an experimental study was carried out to investigate effect of pulsation on heat transfer of fluid flow inside a spiral-coil tube. In order to perform the experiments, a hot water reservoir tank was prepared and the spiral-coil was immersed horizontally inside the tank. Average temperature of the hot water bath was kept constant at 60 °C to establish a quiescent region of uniform temperature. The experiments were conducted in turbulent flow regime using distilled water and Al₂O₃/water nanofluid at 0.5, 1, and 1.5 % particle volume concentration. Results showed that overall heat transfer coefficient of the base fluid flow increases by using nanofluid or pulsation into the base fluid flow up to 14 %. Heat transfer results also indicated that combination of the nanofluid and the pulsation into the fluid flow can increase significantly the overall heat transfer coefficient up to 23 %.