The aim of this research is to investigate experimentally the characteristics of the convective heat transfer and exergy analysis of pure water and water based Al2O3 nanofluid through helical coiled tubes (HCTs) and conical coiled tubes (CCTs) inside shell and coil heat exchangers. HCT and CCT fabricated with different coil torsions (λ) ranges from 0.0202 to 0.052 with different two angles (0° and 45°) while have the same curvature ratio (δ = 0.0564). The effects of mean coil torsion, the cone angle and nanoparticles volume concentration on the thermal performance were investigated. Results indicated that the overall heat transfer coefficient (U ov), convection heat transfer coefficient (h t), the tube side Nusselt number (Nu t), effectiveness (ɛ) and exergy efficiency (ηex) of nanofluids are higher than those of the pure water at same flow condition, and this increase goes up with the increase in particle volume concentration (ϕ). The results also showed that U ov, h t, Nu t, ɛ and ηex increases by decreasing the coil torsion from 0.052 to 0.0202. Correlations for Nu t as a function of the investigated parameters are obtained.