Predicting Parameters of Heat Transfer in a Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger Using Aluminum Oxide Nanofluid with Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Self-Organizing Map (SOM)

This study is a model of artificial perceptron neural network including three inputs to predict the Nusselt number and energy consumption in the processing of tomato paste in a shell-and-tube heat exchanger with aluminum oxide nanofluid. The Reynolds number in the range of 150–350, temperature in the range of 70–90 K, and nanoparticle concentration in the range of 2–4% were selected as network input variables, while the corresponding Nusselt number and energy consumption were considered as the network target. The network has 3 inputs, 1 hidden layer with 22 neurons and an output layer. The SOM neural network was also used to determine the number of winner neurons. The advanced optimal artificial neural network model shows a reasonable agreement in predicting experimental data with mean square errors of 0.0023357 and 0.00011465 and correlation coefficients of 0.9994 and 0.9993 for the Nusselt number and energy consumption data set. The obtained values of eMAX for the Nusselt number and energy consumption are 0.1114, and 0.02, respectively. Desirable results obtained for the two factors of correlation coefficient and mean square error indicate the successful prediction by artificial neural network with a topology of 3-22-2.