An experimental study of heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of divergent wavy minichannels using nanofluids

An experimental investigation was conducted to study the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of an array of wavy divergent minichannels and the results were compared with wavy minichannels with constant cross-section. The experiment was conducted in hydro dynamically developed and thermally developing laminar and transient regimes. The minichannel heat sink array consisted of 15 rectangular channels machined on a 30 × 30 mm² and 11 mm thick Aluminium substrate. Each minichannel was of 0.9 mm width, 1.8 mm pitch and the depth was varied from 1.3 mm at entrance to 3.3 mm at exit for the divergent channels. DI water and 0.5 and 0.8 % concentrations of Al₂O₃/water nanofluid were used as working fluids. The Reynolds number was varied from 700 to 3300 and the heat flux was maintained at 45 kW/m². The heat transfer and pressure drop of these minichannels were analyzed based on the experimental results obtained. It was observed that the heat transfer performance of divergent wavy minichannels was 9 % higher and the pressure drop was 30-38 % lesser than that of the wavy minichannels with constant cross-section, in the laminar regime. Hence, divergent channel flows can be considered one of the better ways to reduce pressure drop. The performance factor of divergent wavy minichannels was 115-126 % for water and 110-113 % for nanofluids.