Investigations on Convective Heat Transfer of Ferrofluids for the Application of Cooling of Photovoltaic Systems

Danvendra Singh; Balkrishna Mehta; Mohammed Asfer

Authors

Danvendra Singh Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Guwahati, Guwahati, 781039, India
Balkrishna Mehta Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Guwahati, Guwahati, 781039, India
Mohammed Asfer Department of Mechanical Engineering, BML Munjal University, Gurugram, India

Keywords:

Photovoltaic Thermal systems (PVT), InfraRed Thermography (IRT), Ferrofluids, Heat transfer

Abstract

The rheological and thermophysical properties of ferrofluids can be altered in the presence of magnetic field in order to augment the convective heat transfer of ferrofluids. Similar to conventional fluids used for cooling of solar Photovoltaic thermal (PVT) systems, ferrofluids in the presence of magnetic field can be a viable solution for effective cooling of the solar PVT systems. Therefore, with an idea to design a ferrofluid based heat exchanger for PVT systems, the present study aims to investigate the convective heat transfer performance of ferrofluids flowing through mini-channel subjected to anexternal magnetic field and a constant wall temperatureboundary condition. The present study reportsthe variation of convective heat transfer coefficient of ferrofluid flow subjected to different cases (constant and time varying) of magnetic field.For both the cases of constant and time varying magnetic field, the heat transfer coefficient is found to be higher as compared to the case of no magnetic field. However, for time varying magnetic field, the heat transfer coefficient is found to be frequency dependent resulting in either enhancement or decrease in heat transfer as compared to the case of constant magnetic field.