An Investigation of the Forced Convection and Heat Transfer with a Cylindrical Agitator Subjected to Non-Newtonian Nanofluids

The present research performed a numerical simulation of laminar forced convection nanofluid-based non-Newtonian flow in a channel connecting a tank with heating regions. To achieve a rapid diffusion of heat, a cylindrical agitator is inserted into the tank. Power-law modelling is employed to describe the effect of non-Newtonian behaviour. The velocity and temperature fields and heat transfer coefficient ratio are studied systematically, taking into account the impact of various parameters, such as the generalised Reynolds number Re, generalised Prandtl number Pr, angular velocity of a cylinder omega, nanoparticle volume fraction phi, mixer size and location. Our research reveals that, to improve the heat transfer in practice, several applicable strategies are available, including the addition of more nanoparticles into the base fluid, which proved to be the most efficient method to enhance the heat transfer of a nanofluid.