Abstract

After decades of dedicated work on nanofluids thermophysical, colloidal, and thermal performance evaluations, the literature has come to a point where clarifying question marks on certain parameters' effects on nanofluids performance is essential before nanofluids become industrialized. This should be performed in a system-specific way, since both the heat transfer indicators and nanofluids behaviour (advantages and challenges) depend on the system of choice and boundary conditions. In this work, we consider graphene nanoplatelet water nanofluids in a double-tube heat exchanger, by processing the experimental data by Agromayor et al. [1], to quantify process parameters impact on their thermal performance factor (TPF). For this purpose, we perform a correlation analysis to see the extent of association between the TPF and the following nanofluid variables: volumetric flow rate, nanoparticle loading, heat transfer coefficient, and pressure drop. Results indicate that the TPF-nanoparticle loading and TPF-heat transfer coefficient correlations are statistically significant, and observed respectively to be moderate and strong.