Natural Convective Heat Transfer of Water-in-FC72 Nanoemulsion Fluids

The use of SOLID-particles has long been a common way of increasing fluid thermal conductivity. In this paper, nanoemulsion fluids—dispersions of LIQUID-nanodroplets—are proposed. As an example, water-in-FC72 nanoemulsion fluids are developed, and their thermophysical properties and impact on natural convective heat transfer are investigated experimentally. A significant increase in thermal conductivity—up to 52% for 12vol% of water nanodroplets (or 7.1 wt%)—is observed in the fluids. The enhancement in conductivity and viscosity of the fluids is found to be nonlinear with water loading, indicating an important role of the hydrodynamic interaction and aggregation of nanodroplets. However, the relative viscosity is found to be about two times the relative conductivity if compared at the same water loading. The presence of water nanodroplets is found to systematically increase the natural convective heat transfer coefficient in these fluids, in contrast to the observation in several conventional nanofluids containing solid nanoparticles.