Effect of CNT concentration and agitation on surface heat flux during quenching in CNT nanofluids

In this article, the effect of Carbon Nanotube (CNT) concentration and agitation on the heat transfer rate has been studied during immersion quenching in CNT nanofluids. For this purpose, CNT nanofluids were prepared by suspending chemically treated CNTs (TCNT) at four different concentrations in deionized (D.I) water without using any surfactant. Quench probes with a diameter of 20 mm and a length of 50 mm were machined from 304L stainless steel (SS) and quenched in water and CNT nanofluids with the CNT concentration ranging from 0.25 to 1.0 wt.%. The heat flux and temperature at the quenched surface were estimated based on the Inverse Heat Conduction (IHC) method using the temperature data recorded at 2 mm below the probe surface during quenching. The computation results showed that the peak heat flux increased with an increase in the CNT concentration up to 0.50 wt.% and started decreasing with further increase in the CNT concentration. The enhanced heat transfer performance of CNT nanofluids during quenching at lower concentration of CNTs is attributed to their higher effective thermal conductivity. The reduced heat transfer performance of CNT nanofluids having higher concentration of CNTs is due to the increased viscosity of CNT nanofluids. The effect of agitation on heat transfer rate during quenching has also been studied in this work by stirring the CNT nanofluid prepared with 0.50 wt.% of CNTs which recorded the maximum peak heat flux among the four concentrations. The effect of CNT nanofluid agitation was counter-intuitive and resulted in decreased heat transfer rate with the increase in agitation rate.