On the evaluation of a finned annular tube in convective heat transfer performance in the presence of Ag/oil nanofluid for a constant thermal flux rate boundary condition

In the present empirical work, the effectiveness of a finned annular tube in the presence of Ag/oil nanofluid is investigated. An annular tube with axial fins was considered as the test case. Suspended Ag nanoparticles in different volume concentrations of 0.011%, 0.044%, and 0.176% were examined in this work. The setup was designed in a way to be sure that the flow is hydrodynamically fully developed along the tube. This experiment has been done in a laminar flow regime in which Reynolds number was less than 160 for all the studied cases. The finned annular tube was wrapped with a coil that satisfied the condition of a constant thermal flux rate of 204 W on the outer boundary. Based on the acquired data, the convective heat transfer coefficient was obtained for all the nanofluid cases and compared to the base fluid. It was observed that the convective heat transfer coefficient substantially rises by increasing the nanoparticles. Which for the best case (volume concentration of 0.171% and Reynolds number of about 160), this factor was about a 33% enhancement compared to the base fluid.