Overview of Hybrid Nano Uids Development and Benefits: A. A. Minea and M. G. Moldoveanu
Overview of Hybrid Nano Uids Development and Benefits: A. A. Minea and M. G. Moldoveanu
Overview of Hybrid Nano Uids Development and Benefits: A. A. Minea and M. G. Moldoveanu
c Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2018.
Abstract—Conventional fluids have poor heat transfer properties, but their vast applications in
power generation, chemical processes, heating and cooling processes, electronics and other micro-
sized applications make the reprocessing of those thermofluids to have better heat transfer properties
quite essential. Recently, it has been shown that the addition of solid nanoparticles to various
fluids can increase the thermal conductivity and can influence the viscosity of the suspensions by
tens of percent. Thermophysical properties of nanofluids were shown dependent on the particle
material, shape, size, concentration, the type of the base fluid, and other additives. In spite of some
inconsistency in the reported results and insufficient understanding of the mechanism of the heat
transfer in nanofluids, it has been emerged as a promising heat transfer fluid. In the continuation
of nanofluids research, the researchers have also tried to use hybrid nanofluid recently, which is
engineered by suspending dissimilar nanoparticles either in mixture or composite form. The idea
of using hybrid nanofluids is to further improve the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics
by trade-off between advantages and disadvantages of individual suspension, attributed to good
aspect ratio, better thermal network and synergistic effect of nanomaterials. As a conclusion, the
hybrid nanofluids containing composite nanoparticles yield significant enhancement of thermal con-
ductivity. However, the long-term stability, production process, selection of suitable nanomaterials
combination to get synergistic effect and cost of nanofluids may be major challenges behind the
practical applications.
DOI: 10.1134/S1810232818040124
1. INTRODUCTION
Nanofluid is a solid–liquid mixture that consists of nanoparticles and a base liquid. Nanoparticles are
basically metal (Cu, Ni, Al, etc.), oxides (Al2 O3 , TiO2 , CuO, SiO2 , Fe2 O3 , Fe3 O4 , BaTiO3 , etc.), and
some other compounds (SiC, CaCO3 , graphene, etc.), and base fluids usually include water, ethylene
glycol, propylene glycol, engine oil, etc. [1–3]. Moreover, in the last few years, some hybrid nanofluids
were developed in order to surpass some inconveniences that affect nanofluids. The introduction of a new
concept of combined/hybrid nanofluids will be clearly explained in this article. These hybrids contain
different nanoparticles types, different base fluids or nanocomposites [4–9].
Nanofluids prepared with nanocomposite materials dispersed in the base fluids are recently consid-
ered by some authors. The nanocomposite defined as composite of two or more nanomaterials in the
nanometer range and dispersed in the fluids is a significant part of nanotechnology, which is one of the
fastest growing areas in materials science and engineering.
Few results on these can be summarized as: Suresh et al. [10] prepared Al2 O3 –Cu nanocomposite-
based nanofluids (by dispersing the nanocomposite in water) and observed thermal conductivity en-
hancement. Suresh et al. [11] studied also the convective heat transfer of the Al2 O3 –Cu nanocom-
posite nanofluid and observed a heat transfer enhancement of about 14%. Kumar et al. [12] observed
thermal conductivity and viscosity enhancements for Cu–Zn nanofluids. Sundar et al. [13] synthesized
nanodiamond–nickel nanocomposite and estimated thermal conductivity and viscosity on experimental
bases. Nine et al. [14] prepared Al2 O3 –MWCNTs hybrid nanofluids and studied their thermal properties
for volume concentrations of 1–6%. Baby and Ramaprabhu [15] synthesized the hybrid nanostructure
*
E-mail: aminea@tuiasi.ro
507
508 MINEA, MOLDOVEANU
(f-MWNT + f-HEG) of functionalized MWNT (f-MWNT) and functionalized HEG (f-HEG) and pre-
pared hybrid nanofluids by dispersing them in water. Sundar et al. [16] prepared MWCNT–Fe3 O4 /water
nanofluid and noticed both heat transfer and friction factor enhancement. Jia et al. [17] prepared
Fe3 O4 -CNT using a hydrothermal method. Madhesh et al. [18] prepared copper–titania nanocomposite
nanofluids and observed that the overall heat transfer coefficient is increasing by more than 50% for all
volume concentrations.
On the other hand, experimental work for a nanocomposite-based nanofluids flow in a tube with
turbulent promoters has limited availability in the literature. Some research was developed by Sundar et
al. [19] for MWCNT–Fe3 O4 /water nanocomposite nanofluids flow in a tube.
Despite the research on nanocomposites, some authors tried different methods to create hybrid
nanofluids and few of these results are reviewed here. Han and Rhi [20] mixed two nanofluids resulting
in a hybrid Ag–Al2 O3 /water, and their main conclusion was that the hybrid nanofluids were not much
effective comparing with the pure nanoparticle nanofluid system. Momim [21] considered two kinds of
particles (Al2 O3 –Cu) mixed in water and found a maximum enhancement of 13.56% in Nusselt number
at a Reynolds number of 1730. Jana et al. [22] added Au and Cu to a CNT water-based nanofluid and
observed that the synergistic effect of hybrid nanofluid that was expected to produce higher thermal
conductivity did not occur for both hybrid nanofluids. Hence, the CNTs did not increase the thermal
conductivity of both CuNP–CNT and AuNP–CNT nanofluids but rather lowered the values if compared
to thermal conductivity of respective single CuNP and AuNP nanofluids.
Chen et al. [23] also mixed two kinds of particles (MWCNT–Fe2 O3 ) in water and noticed a 28%
enhancement for thermal conductivity of hybrid nanofluid. Nimmagadda and Venkatasubbaiah [24]
considered two kinds of particles (Al2 O3 + Ag) mixed in water and noticed a large heat transfer
coefficient enhancement.
Furthermore, this article summarizes recent researches on thermophysical properties, heat transfer
and possible applications and challenges of hybrid nanofluids.
2. METHODOLOGY
2.1. Thermophysical Properties of Hybrid Nanofluids
There are some studies considering heating behavior of hybrid nanofluids, as was explained earlier.
Nevertheless, the information provided in the open literature is incomplete and only few articles dealt
with a comprehensive description of all the thermophysical properties of a certain hybrid nanofluid. In
this article we would like to make a comparison of some described hybrid nanofluids and the simple
nanofluids, as well, and to offer a conclusion of advantages of using a certain hybrid nanofluid.
Furthermore, some data were selected from different references and will be numerically compared in
order to describe hybrid nanofluid in terms of heating performance. The thermophysical properties of the
solid nanoparticles adopted to be used in this study are indicated in Table 1.
The thermophysical properties of studied nanofluids are listed in Table 2. The table contains experi-
mental and theoretical determined properties in order to outline the differences and to be able to attain
a comparison of available data. The experimental results were adopted from Esfe et al. [25–27] and the
theoretical estimations were done with the help of the equations summarized by Oztop and Abu-Nada
[28] as:
Table 1. Thermophysical properties of nanoparticles at 293 K borrowed from Esfe et al. [25]
kp + 2kf + 2ϕ (kp − kf )
knf = kf . (3)
kp + 2kf − ϕ (kp − kf )
For viscosity, the Wang et al. [1999] correlation is expressed as:
μnf = 1 + 7.3ϕ + 123ϕ2 μf , (4)
where μf is the viscosity of the base fluid.
Relative properties are defined as the ratio between the thermophysical property of the nanofluid and
of the base fluid.
with enhanced properties due to the inclusion of nanoparticles. The following formulation represents the
mathematical description of single-phase model governing equations:
Conservation of mass:
respectively. These terms are unknown and must be approximately expressed in terms of mean velocity
and temperature.
div (ρv̄ε) = div {(μ + (μt /σε )) grad ε} + C1ε (ε/κ)Gκ + ρC2ε (ε2 /κ). (9)
In the above equations, Gκ represents the generation of turbulent kinetic energy due to mean velocity
gradients; σκ and σε are effective Prandtl numbers for turbulent kinetic energy and rate of dissipation,
respectively; C1ε and C2ε are constants and μt is the eddy viscosity and is modeled as:
μcp
Pr = . (11)
k
q
h= . (12)
Tw − Tmexit
Moreover, the mean exit temperature was obtained by:
R R
vT (2πr) dr vrT dr
0 0
Tmexit = = . (13)
R R
v (2πr) dr vrdr
0 0
One can notice that the heat transfer coefficient increases with the addition of nanoparticles to the
working fluid and with Re increasing. The results for the considered nanofluids are similar in heat transfer
enhancement.
From Fig. 2, one can notice a better heat transfer performance for the hybrid nanofluid compared to
MgO or Ag water-based nanofluid. This can be explained based on Pr number variation. Furthermore,
this variation trend is similar for all Re numbers considered for this study.
As a conclusion, it can be affirmed that the hybrid nanofluids behave better in heat transfer than the
basic nanofluids.
4. CONCLUSIONS
The review showed that proper hybridization may make the hybrid nanofluids very promising for
heat transfer enhancement; however, lot of research works is still needed in the fields of preparation
and stability, characterization and applications to overcome the challenges.
In this paper, a three-dimensional numerical study using CFD is performed for one metal, one
oxide and one nanocomposite water-based nanofluids flowing in a tube configuration. The overall
conclusion can be that the nanocomposites based on water nanofluids behave better in heat transfer
than the components. This can be attributed to a better synergy between the components that leads
to a better thermal conductivity and a satisfying viscosity (lower for the hybrids in comparison with
basic nanofluids). Moreover, by this hybridization it can make a better heat transfer fluid by combining
nanoparticles with better thermal conductivity and overcoming the disadvantage of increased viscosity
of the resulting fluids.
Nevertheless, further theoretical and experimental research investigations on the effective thermal
conductivity and viscosity are needed to demonstrate the potential of these new fluids and to understand
the heat transfer characteristics of hybrid nanofluids as well as to identify new and unique applications
for these fields.
NOTATIONS
cp —specific heat, J/kg K
D—hydraulic diameter, m
G—generation of turbulent kinetic energy due to mean velocity gradients
h—heat transfer coefficient, W/m2 K
k—thermal conductivity, W/m K
L—channel length, m
Nu—Nusselt number
P̄ —time-averaged flow variable
Pr—Prandtl number
q—wall heat flux, W/m2
r—ray, m
R—ray, R = D/2, m
Re—Reynolds number
T —temperature, K
t¯ —fluctuations in temperature
T̄ —time-averaged temperature
ū —fluctuations in velocity
v—axial velocity, m/s
v̄—time-averaged velocity
Greek Symbols
ε—rate of dissipation
ϕ—volume fraction of particles, %
κ—turbulent kinetic energy
ρ—density, kg/m3
σ—effective Prandtl numbers
μ—fluid dynamic viscosity, kg/ms
Subscripts
f —base-fluid
nf —nanofluid property
m—mean value
mexit—mean value on exit
r—nanofluid/base-fluid ratio
w—wall
ε—rate of dissipation
κ—turbulent kinetic energy
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