The heat transfer abilities of fluids can be improved by adding small particles of sizes of the order of nanometers. Recently a lot of research has been done in evaluating the thermal conductivity of nanofluids using various nanoparticles. In our present work we address this issue by conducting a series of experiments to determine the effective thermal conductivity of alumina-nanofluids by varying the base fluid with water and antifreeze liquids like ethylene glycol and propylene glycol. Temperature oscillation method is used to find the thermal conductivity of the nanofluid. The results show the thermal conductivity enhancement of nanofluids depends on viscosity of the base fluid. Finally the results are validated with a recently proposed theoretical model.

Volume Subject Area:
Heat Transfer
Topics:
Fluids, Nanofluids, Thermal conductivity, Heat transfer, Nanoparticles, Oscillations, Particulate matter, Temperature, Viscosity, Water
1.
Wang
X.
,
Xu
X.
and
Choi
S. U. S.
,
1999
, “
Thermal Conductivity of Nanoparticle-Fluid Mixture
,”
Journal of Thermophysics and heat Transfer
, Vol.
13
, No.
4
, pp.
474
–
480
.
2.
Xie
H.
,
Wang
J.
,
Xi
T.
,
Liu
Y.
,
Ai
F.
and
Wu
Q.
,
2002
, “
Thermal Conductivity Enhancement of Suspensions Containing Nanosized Alumina Particles
,”
Journal of Applied Physics
, Vol.
91
, No.
7
, pp.
4568
–
4572
.
3.
Lee
S.
,
Choi
S. U. S.
,
Li
S.
and
Eastman
J. A.
,
1999
, “
Measuring Thermal Conductivity of Fluids Containing Oxide Nanoparticles
,”
Journal of Heat Transfer
, Vol.
121
, pp.
280
–
289
.
4.
Eastman
J. A.
,
Choi
S. U. S.
,
Li
S.
,
Yu
W.
and
Thompson
L. J.
,
2001
, “
Anomalously increased effective thermal conductivities of ethylene glycol-based nanofluids containing copper nanoparticles
,”
Applied Physics Letters
, Vol.
78
, No.
6
, pp.
718
–
720
.
5.
Bhattacharya P., Vijayan P., Tang T., Nara S., Phelan P.E., Prasher R.S., Wang J. and Song D., 2004, “Evaluation of the Temperature Oscillation Technique to Calculate Thermal Conductivity of Water and Systematic Measurement of the Thermal Conductivity of Aluminum Oxide — Water Nanofluiids,” International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition, Anaheim, CA, November 13–19.
6.
Eastman
J. A.
,
Czarnetzki
W.
and
Roetzel
W.
,
1995
, “
Temperature Oscillation Techniques for Simultaneous Measurement of Thermal Diffusivity and Conductivity
,”
International Journal of Thermophysics
, Vol.
10
, No.
2
, pp.
413
–
422
.
7.
Kays W.M. and Crawford M.E., Convective Heat and Mass Transfer, pp. 550, McGraw-Hill Inc., New York, 1993.
8.
Prasher
R. S.
,
Bhattacharya
P.
and
Phelan
P. E.
,
2005
, “
Thermal Conductivity of Nanoscale Colloidal Solutions (Nanofluids)
,”
Physical Review Letters
, Vol.
94
, pp.
025901
-
1
.
This content is only available via PDF.
Copyright © 2005
 by ASME
You do not currently have access to this content.