Effects of temperature and Reynolds number on heat transfer of surfactant solution

Experiments were conducted to study the heat transfer characteristics of a cationic surfactant solution, Cetyltrimethyl ammonium chloride (CTAC) in a closed loop system. It was found that the heat transfer performance is deteriorated by adding surfactant into water, and there exists a critical Reynolds number which changes with changing solution temperature. There exists a critical temperature at different solution concentrations. The critical Reynolds number increases with increasing solution temperature when the solution temperature is lower than the critical temperature; whereas it decreases rapidly when the solution temperature exceeds the critical temperature. A method of changing heat transfer performance of surfactant drag-reducing flow by controlling temperature was proposed through analyzing the relationship between drag reduction and heat transfer reduction of surfactant solution.