Rheological Characteristics of Nanoparticle Compound Microencapsulated Phase Change Material Suspension

Microencapsulated phase change material (MPCM) suspensions have large specific heat due to the latent heat of the phase change material and enhance the convective heat transfer consequently. However low thermal conductivity of the phase change material diminishes the heat transfer performance of the MPCM suspensions. To improve the thermal conductivity of the MPCM suspensions, TiO₂ nanoparticles were added into the MPCM suspensions to formulate a novel thermal fluid—nanoparticle compound microencapsulated phase change material suspensions. In this paper, the rheological characteristics and shear viscosities of such slurries using a Bolin CVO rheometer (Malvern Instruments) over a range of shear rate (5–500s⁻¹), MPCM concentration (0–20wt%) and TiO₂ nanoparticle concentration 0.5wt% at temperature (20°C–40°C). The result shows that the viscosities of NCMPCM suspensions are almost independent of the shear rate, indicating Newtonian fluid under the conditions of this work and the viscosities depend strongly on temperature which fits well with the VTF function. Based on the effective volume fraction method and Vand equation, two methods that predict the viscosity of nanoparticle compound microencapsulated phase change material suspensions was analyzed and the result shows that the prediction data the effective volume fraction method fit the measurements well.