PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF AN AUTOMOBILE RADIATOR USING AL2O3/WATER+EG BASED NANOCOOLANT

The traditional coolants like water, water blended propylene glycol or ethylene glycol were used in automobile radiators and they possess poor thermo physical properties. The best method for augmentation of heat transfer rate in automobile radiator is the usage of nanofluids as coolants. Nano fluids are the colloidal solutions prepared by diffusion of nanopowder into base fluid. In this paper, the heat transfer performance of Al2O3/Water+EG (volume=70:30) based nanofluids were experimentally investigated while used in an automobile radiator. All the experiments were conducted for different volumetric concentrations of 0.1-0.3% of nanofluids and different flow rates of 5-7 lit/min and various working temperatures ranging from 60°C - 90°C. Based on the results it was observed that radiators using nanofluids show better heat transfer performance when compared with the performance while using base fluid. The maximum enhancement in convective heat transfer coefficient of 41% was recorded with 0.3 vol% concentrations operating at 75°C of radiator inlet temperature and 7 lit/min flow rate when compared to base fluid.