Forced convective flow and heat transfer characteristics of aqueous drag-reducing fluid with carbon nanotubes added

A new kind of aqueous drag-reducing fluid with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) was developed. The new working fluid was an aqueous CTAC (cetyltrimethyl ammonium chloride) solution with CNTs added and has both special effects of drag-reducing and heat transfer enhancement. The thermophysical and rheological properties of the new working fluid were measured. An experiment was carried out to investigate the forced convective flow and heat transfer characteristics of conventional drag-reducing fluid (aqueous CTAC solution) and the new drag-reducing nanofluid in a test tube having an inner diameter of 25.6 mm. Results indicated that there were no obvious differences of the drag-reducing characteristics between conventional drag-reducing fluid and new drag-reducing nanofluid. However, there were obvious differences of the heat transfer characteristics between both fluids. The heat transfer characteristics of new drag-reducing nanofluid have strong dependences on the liquid temperature, the nanoparticle concentration and the CTAC concentration. The heat transfer enhancement technology of nanofluid could be used to solve the problem of heat transfer deterioration for conventional drag-reducing fluids. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.