Experimental Study on Nanofluid Flow in a Porous Cylinder: Viscosity, Permeability and Inertial Factor

Abstract

Knowledge of fluid rheology and flow characteristics is important when studying nanofluid flow in porous media. In this study, an experimental investigation is presented to determine the nanofluid viscosity, the permeability and the inertial (non-Darcy) parameter of a porous cylinder made of several capillary tubes. The applicability of the Darcy-Forchheimer equation for power-law fluids to estimate pressure drop through the porous material is discussed. The occurrence of particle losses from the base fluid (deposition) is also verified.Experiments are completed in two steps. In the first step, physical properties of nanofluids consisting of deionized water and different volume concentrations of Al2O3nanoparticles is measured. In the second step, Al2O3-deionized water nanofluids are pumped through a porous cylinder (porosity 0.249) to evaluate hydraulic and intrinsic permeabilities, and the inertial parameter. The effect of Al2O3volume fraction on these flow properties is studied, and the void morphology changes within the porous cylinder via deposition of nanoparticles are analyzed.

Particulate Fouling and Challenges of Metal Foam Heat Exchangers

“…In addition to that, the effects of foam geometrical on the fouling propensity are not well established due to small parameter ranges [20], [21] and no foulant was involved physically in the past experimental study, even though the effect on velocity profile and flow separation were identified to increase the understanding on porous and non-porous interface [10]. Moreover, there are some conflicting results on the fouling effects with nano-sized particles on metal foam regardless of the particle chemical properties, such as 40 nm Al2O3 nanoparticles showed no deposition or the effects was insignificant for flowing fluid to block the porous cylinder with 0.249 porosity [58]. The nanofluids (based-fluid suspended with nanosize particles) have discrepancies in results probably due to the foam porosity or particle size effects.…”

Soret and Dufour’s Effect on Non-Darcy Natural Convection Flow of Buongiorno Nanofluid over a Vertical Plate in a Porous Medium in the Presence of Viscous Dissipation

“…Recently, this topic has received a considerable interest, because of the excellent thermal performances and the various benefits, of nanofluids, in several engineering applications such as microfluidics, microelectronics, pharmaceutical processes, etc. Thus, several numerical and experimental studies dealing with the accurate assessment of nanofluid properties has been conducted [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. However, it is important to pay attention to sedimentation, erosion and clogging problems that disadvantaged solid-liquid mixtures [9,10].…”