Enhancing the Thermal Performance of Radiators using Nanofluids- A CFD Approach

In the present study, the thermal performance of a simple car radiator has been investigated for different conditions such as coolant type and coolant inlet velocity. Different types of nanofluids have been used as coolants such as Al2O3, CuO, and TiO2 nanofluids. The base fluids taken are water and 50-50 volume percentage of water and ethylene glycol (EG) mixture. The volume percentage of 1%, 2%, and 3% of nanoparticles has been used for all the cases. The lowest outlet temperature and highest heat transfer rate are found for Water-EG based nanofluids. The lowest coolant outlet temperature (355.91 K) is found for 3 vol% of Water-EG based TiO2 nanofluid and the highest heat transfer rate (67.87 W) is found for 3 vol% of Water-EG based CuO nanofluid. The highest outlet temperature and the lowest heat transfer rate are found to be 358.50 K and 51.73 W respectively for water-based CuO nanofluid. Nonetheless, the Water-EG based nanofluids showed better results than water-based nanofluids showing a low coolant outlet temperature and a high heat transfer rate.