Natural convection heat transfer utilizing ionic nanofluids with temperature-dependent thermophysical properties

- Numerical evaluation of an ionic liquids nanofluid is proposed.
- A comparison with an alumina nanofluid in terms of Nu is inserted.
- New Nu correlation for IoNanofluids were developed.

Ionic liquid based nanofluids are a very new and novel class of fluids used for heat transfer. The thermophysical properties of these new fluids are extremely encouraging in comparison to base ionic liquids and recommend these new fluids for solar applications. This paper deals with a numerical implementation of an ionic liquid nanofluid in a square enclosure considering two heating situations; bottom heating and lateral heating of the enclosure. Comparison with a regular alumina nanofluid in terms of Nusselt number is inserted. Thermophysical properties of these Ionic liquid based nanofluids were considered variable with temperature and the numerical results are correlated as a function of Ra and volume concentration (ϕ) for the two studied cases in the range of 104 ≤ Ra ≤ 106 and 0% ≤ ϕ ≤ 2.5%. As an overall conclusion, this innovative class of heat transfer fluids reveals great potential in advanced heat transfer applications.

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