THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF THERMAL PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT OF AN AUTOMOBILE RADIATOR WITH NANOFLUID

In an automobile radiator, water and ethylene glycol (50-50) mixture is used as conventional coolants for many years. Thermal modeling of the existing radiator with conventional coolant property is performed and the heat transfer rate of the radiator is calculated. The heat transfer fluid has low thermal conductivity resulting in larger size radiators for a designed heat load. The present theoretical study focused to improve the heat transfer rate of the radiator by using nanofluid as an engine coolant. CuO-water and Al2O3-water nanofluids are used as engine coolant with five different volume concentrations in the range of 0.1% to 0.5%. It is observed that, about 6% of heat transfer enhancement could be achieved with the addition of 2% nanoparticle in the base fluid. From this study it was found out for the given heat load, the size of the radiator can be reduced by 25%, by replacing the water-ethylene glycol coolant with nanofluid based coolant. Also, the cost associated with the radiator is correspondingly reduced.