Suspension Stability and Thermal Conductivity of Oxide Based Nanofluids with Low Volume Concentration

摘要

Nanofluid is a new class of heat transfer fluid which contains suspended metallic or nonmetallic nanoparticles in traditional fluid. In this paper, nanofluids containing low volume concentrations (0.1-0.5vol.%) of Al_2O_3 and SiO_2 nanoparticles were produced using a two-step method with ultrasonication and without any surfactant. Suspension stability of nanofluid was characterized and analyzed using zeta potential, average particle size and absorbancy method. The KD2-pro thermal property meter was used to measure the thermal conductivities of Al_2O_3(40nm)-water and SiO_2(30nm)-water nanofluids at different volume concentrations (0.1-0.5vol.%) and temperature(25-50°C). The results show that adding nanoparticles into base fluid can enhance the thermal conductivity greatly. Furthermore, it is also show that the thermal conductivities increase nearly linearly with the nanoparticle volume concentration increasing, and increase significantly with the temperature increasing. A model of thermal conductivity of nanofluid, which has a much better precision, was proposed. But the values of the model are lower than the measured thermal conductivities.