Numerical Investigation of Heat Transfer of CuO Nanofluid Using Eulerian-Eulerian Two Phase Model

In this study, laminar forced convection of CuO nanofluid is numerically investigated in sudden expansion microchannel with expansion ratio of 3:1 and isotherm walls. The importance and developments of microfluidic devices, like expansion microchannel, has caused that the investigation of the flow and the heat transfer of nanofluid in sudden expansion microchannel to be so important. On the other hand, the two phase models can be used instead of single phase model very well. Among two phase models, Eulerian-Eulerian model is very efficient because of considering the relative velocity and temperature of the phases and the nanoparticle concentration distribution. An Eulerian two-fluid model is considered to simulate the nanofluid flow inside the microchannel and the governing mass, momentum and energy equations for both phases are solved using the finite volume method. It can be observed that the Eulerian two phase model of the CuO nanofluid enhances the heat transfer instead of using pure water as a coolant. Reynolds number and nanoparticle volume concentration increase the average Nusselt number, while the pressure drop increases only slightly. Also, the heat transfer increases with decrease in the nanoparticle diameter.