Thermal properties and rheological behavior of water based Al2O3 nanofluid as a heat transfer fluid

•Thermal conductivity of Al2O3 nanofluid increases with increasing the concentration and temperature.•Viscosity of Al2O3 nanofluid increases with increasing the concentration.•Basis of comparison has significant effect on heat transfer evaluation.•Equal pumping power is the best base of comparison.

An experimental investigation and theoretical study of thermal conductivity and viscosity of Al2O3/water nanofluids are presented in this article. Various suspensions containing Al2O3 nanoparticles were tested in concentration ranging from 3% to 50% in mass and temperature ranging from 293 K to 323 K. The results reveal that both the thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids increase with temperature and particle concentration accordingly while the increase in viscosity is much higher than the increase in thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity and viscosity enhancement are in the range of 1.1–87% and 18.1–300%, respectively. Moreover, the results indicate that the thermal conductivity increases nonlinearly with concentration, but, linearly with the increase in temperature. In addition, the experimental results are compared with some existing correlations from literature and some modifications are suggested. Finally, the average heat transfer coefficient at different basis of comparisons including equal Reynolds number, fluid velocity and pumping power is studied based on the experimental thermal conductivity and viscosity in fully developed laminar and turbulent flow regimes. It is found that equal Reynolds number as a basis of comparison is highly misleading and equal pumping power can be used to study the advantage of using nanofluid instead of the base fluid.