Applied Thermal Engineering 62 (2014) 492e499

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Optimization of thermal performances and pressure drop

of rectangular microchannel heat sink using aqueous carbon
nanotubes based nanouid
Salma Halelfadl a, *, Ahmed Mohammed Adham e, Normah Mohd-Ghazali b,
Thierry Mar a, Patrice Estell c, Robiah Ahmad d
a

LGCGM EA3913, Universit Rennes 1, IUT Saint Malo, France

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, 81310 Johor Barhru, Malaysia
LGCGM EA3913, Universit Rennes1, IUT Rennes, France
d
Razak School of Engineering and Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM International Campus, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
e
Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineering Techniques, Erbil Technical Engineering College, Erbil Polytechnic University, Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq
b
c

h i g h l i g h t s

Optimization of 0.01% weight concentration of aqueous carbon nanotubes based nanouid as coolant in a rectangular MCHS has been completed using
the elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) optimization procedure.

The optimized thermal resistance for the nanouid is better than that of water particularly at high temperature.

The reduction in number of channels is very slight, a large quantity of 1 cm by 1 cm MCHS could mean savings in the production cost using nanouid.

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 21 January 2013
Accepted 4 August 2013
Available online 5 September 2013

The present work focuses on analytical optimization of a rectangular microchannel heat sink using
aqueous carbon nanotubes based nanouid as coolant. The particles weight concentration used in this
study is 0.01%. The density, the thermal conductivity and the rheological behavior of the nanouid are
experimentally investigated in order to evaluate the thermal resistance and the pumping power in
microchannel under laminar ow. An analytical approach of optimization scheme was applied; it is
compiled from a systematic thermal resistance model as an analysis method and the elitist nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA2). The effects of the temperature, the channel aspect ratio, the channel wall ratio and the use of aqueous carbon nanotubes based nanouid on the thermal
resistance and the pumping power are investigated. The optimized results showed that use of the
nanouid as a working uid reduce the total thermal resistance and can enhance signicantly the
thermal performances of the working uid at high temperatures.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Nanouid
Microchannel
Heat transfer enhancement
Optimization
NSGA2

1. Introduction
Recent developments in the integrated circuits fabrication
technology have allowed to integrate 3e6 billion transistors in a
single electronic chip. This enormous number of transistors made
these ICs powerful enough to perform multiple functions without
any noticeable time delay. However, huge amount of heat (100 W/
cm2 [1]) is generated which rises the ICs temperature signicantly. To ensure better performances of these ICs, it is vital to
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 33 650647249.
E-mail address: salma.halelfadl@insa-rennes.fr (S. Halelfadl).
1359-4311/$ e see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2013.08.005

suppress this temperature rise to its minimum. Since the innovation work by Tuckerman and Pease [2], the microchannel heat
sink MCHS attracted great interest in recent years because of its
capacity to dissipate a large heat from a small area. Day after day,
researchers realized that the basic capabilities of the microchannel heat sinks are not enough sufcient to perform effective
cooling of MEMS devices. Therefore, unlimited efforts were
devoted to enhance the capabilities of the microchannel heat
sinks using different structural material [3e6], different channel
geometries [7e10] and different coolants [11e13]. The use of
different materials and channel geometries have almost reached
to their optimum stage, signicant improvement in the overall

S. Halelfadl et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 62 (2014) 492e499

performance of the microchannel heat sinks could not be achieved. However, the working uids mostly used in microchannel
heat sinks are air, water and refrigerants. The properties of these
coolants limit their capabilities of heat removals in microchannel
heat sink. The basic idea is to improve the thermal performances
by changing the working uid properties [14]. Based on this
concept, recent researches focused on the heat transfer
enhancement by using nanouids [15e18]. Nanouids consist of
nanometer-sized particles of metals, oxides, nitrides, or nanotubes dispersed in a base uid. They have attracted much attention because of their high thermal conductivity and thermal
performances compared to pure uids therefore great potential
for heat transfer enhancement [19e21]. In recent years, several
investigations have been carried on heat transfer performances of
microchannel MCHS using nanouids. Lee et al. [22] investigated
experimentally the effectiveness of alumina water based nanouid at enhancing heat transfer in microchannel heat sinks. Lelea
[23] found by numerical modeling of alumina water based
nanouid in microchannel that the heat transfer enhancement
rises as the volume fraction increases or the particles diameter
decreases. Teng and Yu [24] studied experimentally the merits
and the limitations of aqueous CNTs based nanouid for cooling
system for engine. Chein and Huang [25] investigated the thermal
and hydrodynamic performance of a CuO/water cooled rectangular microchannel heat sink for different volume fraction and
two specic geometries. They found that the performances were
greatly improved for these two specic geometries by using
nanouids as the coolants compared with pure water due to the
increase in thermal conductivity of coolant and the nanoparticles
thermal dispersion effect.
Mohammed et al. [26] investigated numerically the thermal
performances of alumina/water cooled rectangular microchannel
heat sink. They found that the nanouid-cooled MCHS has lower
thermal resistance than pure water-cooled MCHS. The thermal
resistance value decreases as the volume fraction of nanoparticle
increases.
Abbassi and Aghanaja [27] investigated heat transfer
enhancement of a microchannel heat sink with copper water CuO/
water based nanouids. Their results show that the use of nanouid
leads to astonishing heat transfer enhancement in MCHS and this
enhancement increases with increasing ow Reynolds number and
particle concentration. A similar analysis was performed by Tsai
and Chein [28] for MCHS performance using Cu/water and aqueous
carbon nanotubes based nanouids as working uids. Based on
porous media model for the microchannel, they found that the
nanouid can enhance signicantly the thermal performances of
the microchannel only when the porosity and the aspect ratio are
less than the optimum values evaluated under the pressure drops
conditions. Bhattacharya et al. [29] found that the use of alumina
water based nanouid improves the microchannel heat sink performances MCHP by reducing n thermal resistance. Their simulation results show that fully developed heat transfer coefcient
increases with Reynolds number even under laminar ow.
Hang [30] performed an analytical study of the viscous dissipation effect on thermal performances of nanouids in microchannel under laminar fully developed ow. The results show that
the Nusselt number is overestimated when the viscous dissipation
is neglected.
As reported so far, carbon nanotubes based nanouids are
rarely investigated in MCHS. In most of the works mentioned
above, the thermophysical properties are calculated using
analytical models. However, many results in published literature
are not consistent with others or with the analytical models [31e
33]. In the present work, we experimentally characterize the
thermophysical properties of aqueous carbon nanotubes based

493

Fig. 1. Schematic drawing of the microchannel heat sink model.

nanouid. The aim is to optimize the thermal resistance and the

pumping power in a rectangular microchannel MCHS under
laminar ow using the optimization algorithm developed by
Ahmed et al. [34]. This optimization is comprised of a thermal
resistance and pressure drop as analysis models and the NSGA-II
as optimization algorithm. The effects of the temperature, the
channel aspect ratio optimization and the use of aqueous carbon
nanotubes based nanouid on the thermal resistance and the
pumping power of the working uid in microchannel are
investigated.
2. Mathematical modeling and validation
2.1. Mathematical model
Fig. 1 shows the geometric conguration of the rectangular
microchannel heat sink under consideration. The microchannel
heat sink consists of an adiabatic cover plate on the top and n
number of parallel microchannels with rectangular cross section. A
uniform heat ux (q) was assumed to be applied by a heat generating source from upper surface of the microchannel heat sink with
the coolant owing through the channels.
L, W, H and t are respectively the length, the width, the height
and the substrate thickness of the microchannel heat sink. wc, ww
and Hc are respectively the channel width, the wall width and the
channel height.
In the optimization process of the microchannel heat sink, the
channel width wc and the wall width ww are regarded as variables
and the other parameters are xed as reported in Table 1. wc and ww
are related to the channel aspect ratio a and the wall width ratio b
as follows:

Hc
wc

ww
wc

a and b will be used in the optimization process.

The thermal performance of the microchannel heat sink is
evaluated by its total thermal performances dened as the ratio
of the temperature difference between the inlet uid and the
maximum outlet surface and the heat ux (q). The total thermal
resistance R is calculated using the Equation (1) given by Ref.
[34] as:

Table 1
Geometrical parameters of microchannel heat sink.
Parameters

Values

Heat sink width. W (m)

Heat sink length. L (m)
Substrate thickness. t (m)

1  102
1  102
213  106

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S. Halelfadl et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 62 (2014) 492e499

Table 2
Mathematical model validation.
Models

Parameters

Tuckerman & Pease [2]

Current model

Relative uncertainty

W (cm)

L (cm)

Hc (mm)

G (cm3/s)

R ( C/W)

DP (psi)

R (%)

DP (%)

1
1

1
1

0.32
0.32

5.714
5.714

0.7857
0.7857

4.7
4.7

0.11
0.102

15
15.8

e
7.3

e
5.3

2
R

7
L
2 1b
1 1b
t
1b 6
1
7aHc

ln6
Cpf mf Re 1 a hav 1 2ah khs pkhs 4sin pb 5
21b

(1)
The hydrodynamic performance is assessed using the total
pressure drop Dp/pumping power Pp method as [34]:





 
2
V2
1 aL Vmf
1
1 2
Dp f
rf
rf mf
1:792:23
0:53
2Hc
2
2
1 b
1 b
(2)
Pp Dptot  G

(3)

The average convective heat transfer coefcient h in Equation

(1) is evaluated using the following correlation proposed by Kim
and Kim [35] for pure water in a rectangular microchannel

h 2:253 8:164

 a 1:5 k
f
a1
Dh

(4)

The friction factor used in the calculation of the total pressure

drop, and consequently the pumping power, is evaluated using the
correlation formulated by Copeland [36] which considers the
developing and the fully developed ow conditions and it has the
following form:


fRe

3:2



0:5

ReDh 0:52 2
4:7 19:64B2
L

(5)

1 2

1
2
a1

B a
1

(6)

The number of the channels is calculating using Equation (7) as

follows:

W
wc ww

(7)

2.2. Mathematical model validation

The results from the current model for the total thermal resistance and the pressure drops (Equations (1) and (2)) have been
compared with experimental results provided by Tuckerman and
Pease [2] for water as a working uid. The properties of pure water
at 23  C and the same microchannel dimensions as that used by
Tuckerman and Pease are used in order to validate our model under
the same conditions as in their experimental model. Table 2 shows
the parameters used in Equations (1)e(6). It can be clearly seen
from Table 2 that the current model produces the experimental
results of Tuckerman and Pease with very slight disparities (about
7% for total thermal resistance and about 5% for pressure drops).
These disparities can be due to the different approaches used in
both models. In addition, owing to the experimental uncertainly,

we can consider that the disparities between our results and

Tuckerman and Peases results are included in the experimental
uncertainly. These results allow us to validate our current mathematical model.
3. Optimization NSGA2
3.1. Optimization procedure
In the current study, the system is treated as a multi-objective
functions system with two objective functions related to its thermal and hydrodynamic performance. The rst objective function is
the total thermal resistance (Equation (1)) and the second is the
pumping power (Equation (3)). The dimensions of the MCHS are
the same as that used by Tuckerman and Pease [2] with three
channel heights attempted (Hc 320; 302 and 287 mm). The NSGAII algorithm is invoked to optimize (minimize) both objective
functions simultaneously. The design variables (a and b) limits are
listed in Table 3. The optimization procedure employed in Ref. [34]
is used and modied in order to generate a Pareto optimal front
with obvious trade-off between both objective functions. The
modication was in terms of the employed crossover function in
which the arithmetic function was used instead of the scattered
function used in Ref. [34]. In addition, the uniform function was
used as a mutation function. These modications signicantly
enhanced the generated Pareto optimal front in which denser front
in terms of the number of the optimal solutions compared to the
one generated in Ref. [34] is observed. Lastly, the complete optimization procedure employed in the current study is detailed in
previous work by Ref. [34] and it is illustrated in Fig. 2.
3.2. Optimization validation with pure water
The optimization of the thermal resistance and the pumping
power have been carried out rstly for water under the same
operating conditions as Tuckerman and Pease [2] as shown in
Table 4. The results of the optimization using NSGA2 showed clearly
a signicant reduction of the total thermal resistance of 23%, 36%
and 43% respectively for Hc 320; 302 and 287 mm.
4. Heat sink optimization with nanouids
In this part, an aqueous carbon nanotubes based nanouid is
used as working uid in the microchannel heat. The thermophysical properties (the density, the thermal conductivity and the viscosity) used to evaluate the thermal resistance and the pumping
power in the governing equations are rstly evaluated
Table 3
Design variables limits.
Limits

Upper
Lower

Design variables

5
1

0.01
0.1

S. Halelfadl et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 62 (2014) 492e499

495

properties of both the nanotubes and the basic solution are

summarized in Table 5.
De-ionized water was used to dilute the basic solution (1% wt)
and prepare the suspension of 0.01% in mass concentration. The
mixture is stirred with a mixer for 30 min then left at rest and the
process was repeated 24 h later. The purpose of the mechanical
stirring is to ensure a uniform dispersion of nanoparticles and prevent initial agglomerating of nanoparticles in the base uid.
4.2. Density
The density measurements were performed on Anton PAAR
DMA vibrating tube densimeter connected to cell 602. The temperature is stabilized by a cryothermostat able to ensure accuracy
up to 0.01 K.
The calibration of the densimeter was preliminary performed using pure water and dry air. It allows a precision about
1.105 g/cm3.
Fig. 4 shows the evolution of density as a function of temperature for experimental data. The results showed that the nanouid
density decreases with an increase of temperature. The density of
the nanouid is slightly higher than that of pure water as expected
because of the presence of carbon nanotubes nanoparticles.
4.3. Thermal conductivity

Fig. 2. The complete optimization procedure.

experimentally. The heat capacity of the nanouid is calculated by

adapted model for nanouids as is shown in the following.

4.1. Nanouid
An aqueous carbon nanotubes based nanouid was prepared
by dispersing carbon nanotubes into distillated water as a base
uid. The nanouid was prepared and provided by Nanocyl
(Belgium). This suspension consists of thin multi-walled carbon
nanotubes (carbon purity 90%) dispersed in a mixture of deionized water and surfactant from ultra-sonication (Fig. 3). The

The thermal conductivity of nanouid was measured using KD2

Pro thermal property analyzer purchased from Decagon Devices Inc.
where it uses transient hot wire method for thermal conductivity
measurement. The experimental set up is schematically shown in
Fig. 5. In thermal conductivity measurement, the vessel containing
the test sample was placed in a temperature-controlled bath and a
PT100 platinum probe (with accuracy 0.1  C) embedded vertically
inside the vessel was used to monitor the sample temperature.
In order to obtain precise results, we maintained the sample and
probe at constant temperature, for about 30 min. Once the stability
of the temperature is achieved, ten measurements are then taken at
a given temperature to minimize the uncertainly of measurements.
It is worth noting that after each measurement, the probe was
taken out and cleaned to prevent the agglomeration of nanoparticles upon it.
The experimental apparatus was calibrated beforehand by
measuring the thermal conductivity of pure water, with an estimated accuracy less than 3%.
The experimental results in Fig. 6 indicate that the increase of
temperature enhances the thermal conductivity of the nanouid. In
fact, the thermal conductivity enhancement is about 2% at 20  C, 9%
at 30  C and 12% at 40  C. The temperature has a signicant effect
on the enhancement of the thermal conductivity of the nanouids.
4.4. Rheological behavior
The rheological measurements of nanouid were performed
using a stress controlled rheometer Malvern Kinexus Pro equipped
with a cone and plate geometry and temperature from 10 to 40  C.

Table 4
Comparison of the current results and Tuckerman and Peases results.
Tuckerman & Pease

DR/R (%)

Optimization results (current study)

G (cm3/s)

Hc (mm)

R ( C/W)

Pp (W)

R ( C/W)

Pp (W)

4.7
6.5
8.6

320
302
287

5.71
6.01
5.218

0.78
1
0.818

0.11
0.09
0.113

0.486
1.838
0.762

4.899
4.922
4.996

0.011
0.017
0.011

0.085
0.057
0.064

0.223
0.902
0.595

23%
36%
43%

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S. Halelfadl et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 62 (2014) 492e499

1010

Pure water

Density (kg/m3)

1005

CNT_0.01%

1000
995
990
985
980
975
15

20

25

30
35
Temperature ( C)

40

45

Fig. 4. Density of the suspensions CNT/water as a function of temperature.

Fig. 3. Tunneling Electron Microscopy (TEM) images of synthesized MWNTs by

Nanocyl.

The measurement procedure and the validation of the experimental protocol were detailed and reported in a previous work
[37,38]. In brief, once transferred between the cone and plate, the
sample was allowed to equilibrate at the working temperature for
5 min before starting the viscosity measurement. Then, without
any preshear, a logarithmic stress ramp under steady-state conditions with maximum step duration of 180 s was applied. When a
steady-state ow condition is achieved and maintained for 10 s, the
shear rate is measured. The range of shear stress applied was preliminary determined to ensure steady-state ow at low shear
stress, and to avoid instability due to turbulent ow and sample
ejection at high shear stress. The tests were done in two replicates
to verify the reproducibility of the measurement and the suspensions stability with time.
Fig. 7 shows the evolution of the apparent dynamic viscosity as a
function of shear rate for the tested range of temperatures from 10
to 40  C. As reported in Ref. [38], the results show that the nanouid
behaves in Newtonian manner as the apparent viscosity is quite
constant within the shear rate range investigated. It is worth noting
that the viscosity of nanouid is close to the viscosity of de-ionized
water. This means, that at this particle content, the presence of
nanotubes does not affect the viscosity of the base uid. It is also
observed that the temperature has a strong effect on the rheological properties of CNT nanouid. Actually, the apparent viscosity
decreases with increasing temperature, as generally reported for
many nanouids.

5. Results and discussion

The thermal resistance and the pumping power of both water
and aqueous carbon nanotubes based nanouid are optimized in
order to evaluate the performances benets of the use of nanouids
at three operating temperatures 20  C, 30  C and 40  C. The thermophysical properties used at operating temperatures are reported
in Table 6. The conditions employed in this part are as follows:
Volumetric ow rate G: 4.7 cm3/s; channel height Hc: 320 mm.
The channel aspect ratio a and the wall width ratio b are optimized for both water and nanouid to evaluate the best overall
performances (total thermal resistance and pressure drop).
The operating temperature has got a signicant effect on the
thermal performances of the working uid in the microchannel heat
sink. In fact, the convective heat transfer coefcient in the microchannel heat sink is enhanced by 2% at 20  C, 12% at 30  C and 13% at
40  C due to the addition of small amount of carbon nanotubes.
Table 7 lists the optimized results obtained from the NSGA-II
optimization algorithm for the lowest thermal resistance with the
associated a, b and pumping power for both the nanouid and
water coolants in the MCHS at 20  C, 30  C and 40  C. Table 7 shows
that the optimized thermal resistance for the nanouid is better
than that for water at the microchannel heights (Hc) investigated
here particularly at high temperature. Compared to water, going
from 30  C to 40  C, the reduction in the thermal resistance for the
nanouid is further increased by 50%. The optimized aspect ratio
for the nanouid is not signicantly different from that of water
except at 30  C where the lower aspect ratio for the nanouid
would translate into smaller number of channels per MCHS.

4.5. The heat capacity

OHanley et al. [39] have shown experimentally using a differential scanning calorimeter that the model of Equation (8) is well
adapted to estimate the specic heat of nanouids. We used this
model to determine the heat specic of the nanouid studied.

Cp;nf

fv rCp np 1  fv rCp

fv rnp 1  fv rbf

bf

(8)

Table 5
Characteristics of CNT basic solution (1% wt).
Supplier Nanoparticles
Nanocyl

Size

4m (nf) Dispersant

Multi-walled carbon nanotubes D: 9e10 nm 1%

L: 1.5 mm

SDBS
4m (s) 2%

Fig. 5. Schema of experimental set up of thermal conductivity measurements.

S. Halelfadl et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 62 (2014) 492e499

0.45

Pure water
CNT_0.01%

0.7
0.65
0.6
0.55

CNT_0.01%

0.4

0.75

Thermal resistance (K/W)

Thermal conductivity (W/m.K)

0.8

Water
0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1

0.5
10

15

20

25
30
Temperature (C)

35

40

45

0.05
1

Fig. 6. Thermal conductivity of water and carbon nanotubes based nanouid with
temperature.

0.2
30C

Pumping power (W)

20C

40C

Fig. 8. Optimized thermal resistance against the channel aspect ratio (a) at 40  C.

CNT_0.01%

0.18
10C

Channel aspect ratio

10

apparent viscosity (mPa.s)

497

Water

0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
1

0.1
10

100

shear rate (1/s)

Channel aspect ratio

1000

Fig. 9. Optimized pumping power against the channel aspect ratio (a) at 40  C.

Fig. 7. Apparent viscosity of CNT as a function of shear rate for different temperatures.

0.45

NTC_0.01

T ( C)
20
30
40

r (kg/m3)

m (Pa s)

k (W/m K)

1000.5  3.0
998.2  2.9
995.5  2.9

0.6036  0.0211
0.6817  0.0238
0.7119  0.02491

Cp (J/kg K)

0.001
0.0009
0.0008

4181.65
4177.65
4178.65

Although the reduction in number of channels is very slight, a large

quantity of 1 cm by 1 cm MCHS could mean savings in the production cost.
Figs. 8 and 9 show the optimized thermal resistance against the
channel aspect ratio (a), and the optimized pumping power against
the channel aspect ratio (a) for the nanouid at 40  C, respectively.
The nanouid outperformed water at lower a, almost 14% lower at
the a value of unity. After a value of 3.5, any increase in a only reduces the thermal resistance slightly as shown in Table 7 for the

Table 7
Optimized results of nanouid and water as coolants.

Hc 287
(mm)

Optimized
results

CNT/water (0.01%)
T 20

T 30

T 40

T 20

T 30

T 40

R ( C/W)
P (W)

0.085
0.223
4.899
0.011

0.083
0.206
4.997
0.023

0.082
0.182
4.998
0.011

0.085
0.222
4.998
0.011

0.084
0.178
4.999
0.012

0.084
0.16
4.996
0.01

a
b

Water

Eau

0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0.01

0.012

0.014
0.016
0.018
Wall width ratio

0.02

0.022

0.024

Fig. 10. Optimized thermal resistance against the wall width to channel width ratio (b).

0.2

Pumping power (W)

Table 6
Experimental results of thermophysical properties of nanouid.

Thermal resistance (K/W)

0.4

CNT_0.01%
water

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0.01

0.012

0.014

0.016

0.018

0.02

0.022

Wall width ratio

Fig. 11. Optimized pumping power against the wall width to channel width ratio (b).

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S. Halelfadl et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 62 (2014) 492e499

0.25
T = 20 Hc = 320
T = 30 Hc = 320

Pumping power (W)

0.2

T = 40 Hc = 320

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

Thermal resistance (K/W)

Fig. 12. Optimized pumping power against thermal resistance and temperature for
carbon nanotubes based nanouid.

three heights investigated. Figs. 10 and 11 show the optimized

thermal resistance against the wall width to channel width ratio
(b), and the pumping power against the wall width to channel
width ratio (b) at 40  C, respectively. Two signicant observations
can be seen here. Firstly, the optimized thermal resistance for the
nanouid is much lower than that for water at the range of b
shown. Secondly, the optimized conditions for water is limited for
lower values of b, below a value of 0.011.
Fig. 12 shows the optimized performance of the rectangular
MCHS using CNT based nanouid for the temperatures 20  C, 30  C,
and 40  C. It can be seen that as the temperature increases, which
increases the thermal conductivity and lowers the density of the
nanouid coolant (Table 6), the thermal resistance decreases with
the pumping power increasing. At any particular pumping power,
the thermal resistance is lowest at 40  C.
6. Conclusion
Optimization of the 0.01% weight concentration of aqueous carbon nanotubes based nanouid as coolant in a rectangular MCHS has
been completed using the elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) optimization procedure. Thermophysical properties of this specic nanouid were rst obtained experimentally
under standard experimental procedure and these properties are
used directly in the optimization process. The results have shown
that the nanouid can improve the convective heat transfer of the
microchannel working uid by 2% at 20  C, 12% at 30  C and 13% at
40  C. The results report also that the optimized thermal resistance
for the nanouid is better than that of water particularly at high
temperature. The optimized aspect ratio is also lower for the nanouid which means a narrower channel and higher exchange surface.
Finally, since a MCHS generally operates at higher than room temperature, the use of aqueous carbon nanotubes based nanouid is
clearly desirable to enhance the cooling performances of high heat
generation from a MCHS.
Acknowledgements
Nanocycl Belgium is gratefully acknowledged for providing
the carbon nanotubes CNT/water based nanouid.
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T: temperature,  C
V: velocity, m/s
W, w: width, m

Greek symbols

Nomenclature

m: dynamic viscosity, Pa s
a: channel aspect ratio
b: wall width ratio
h: n efciency
DP: pressure drop, Pa
r: density, kg/m3

Cp: heat capacity, J/kg K

D: diameter, m
Dh: hydraulic diameter, m
f: friction coefcient
h: convective heat transfer coefcient, W/m2 K
H: height, m
G: ow rate, m3/s
k: thermal conductivity, W/m K
L: length, m
Pp: pumping power, W
R: thermal resistance, K/W
Re: Reynolds number

Subscripts
f: uid
nf: nanouid
0: water
mf: inside the microchannel
c: channel
hs: heat sink
bf: base uid
np: nanoparticles
w: wall

4: concentration, %
g_ : shear rate, s1

499