Assessment of the Influence of Graphene Nanoparticles on Thermal Conductivity of Graphene/Water Nanofluids Using Factorial Design of Experiments

Abstract

In this study, 2³ factorial design of experiment was employed to evaluate the effect of parameters of hot fluid inlet temperature, graphene nanofluid concentration and hot fluid flow rate on thermal conductivity of graphene/water nanofluid. The levels of  hot fluid inlet temperature are kept at 35°C and 85°C, nanofluid concentration is kept at 0.1 and 1.0 volume% (vol.%) and the hot fluid flow rate are kept at 2 lpm and 10 lpm. Experiments were conducted with 16 runs as per MINITAB design software using graphene/water nanofluids in the corrugated plate type heat exchanger.  The nanofluid thermal conductivity was determined using the mixing rule for different nanofluid concentrations ranging from 0.1 to 1.0%. Normal, Pareto, Residual, Main and Interaction effects, Contour Plots were drawn. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) of test results depict that the hot fluid temperature and nanofluid concentration have significant effect on the thermal conductivity of graphene/water nanofluid (response variable).