Abstract
In the foreseeable future, heat exchangers will continue to play an important role in environmental management and have numerous applications, their geometry has been the subject of interest for many researchers. The main goal of this research is improving the heat exchangers' thermal performance and investigating the exergy using SIMPLE algorithm, k-w turbulent model and the Eulerian- Eulerian method for multiphase flow. Hence, the operation of Al2O3CuO-water hybrid nanofluid in a 3D shell-and-tube heat exchanger is simulated to enhance the contact surface of hot and cold fluid streams using computation fluid mechanics techniques. Reynolds number is 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, and 25,000 and volume fraction of nanoparticle is 2–6%. The innovations of this research are the use of the use of hybrid nanofluid and turbulator. The hybrid nanoparticles are employed to enhance the thermal conductivity and the turbulator is utilized to increase flow turbulence. The results demonstrated that the hybrid nanofluid, the turbulator, and high amount of Reynolds number can have a remarkable impact on increasing the thermal performance. The obtained results revealed that a 6% increment in hybrid nanoparticles volume fraction and an enhancement in Reynolds number from minimum to maximum lead to a 126% improvement in thermal performance in the presence of the turbulator. Lastly, environmental damage, energy consumption, and emissions are reduced by nanofluids.