Numerical study on nanofluids natural convection heat transfer inside power transformer windings

As an innovative approach to improve the cooling efficiency of fluid, the use of nanofluids has attracted increasing attention in engineering applications. In this paper, the impact on the natural convective heat transfer in disc-type transformer windings due to transformer oil-based nanofluids is studied numerically. A low-voltage winding using nanofluid (SiC/oil) as the coolant is modelled two-dimensionally and simulated by computational fluid dynamics and the multi-phase mixture model. The numerical method is validated with the existing results of transformers using conventional oil cooling, and grid-independence study is carried out for the nanofluid flow. Compared with transformer oil cooling, the temperature of nanofluid cooled winding is significantly reduced, while the temperature trend along the flow direction remains essentially the same. Moreover, the effects of nanofluid on the mass flow rate and the coolant temperature have been taken into consideration in the heat transfer analysis.