Experimental Study of Preparation, Characterisation and Thermal Behaviour of Water-based Nanofluids containing Titanium Oxide Nanoparticles

摘要

This paper presents the preparation, characterisation and thermal behavior of TiO_2/water Nanofluids with different concentration. The presence of Nanosized particles in the conventional heat transfer fluids enhances its thermo physical character. In the present work, TiO_2/water Nanofluids with various volume concentrations were prepared by dispersing a specified amount of spherical sized TiO_2 Nanoparticles in distilled water without any surfactant. To get a uniform dispersion and stable suspension, the Nanofluids were kept under ultrasonic vibration continuously for 3 hours. Zeta potential measurement brought detailed insight into the causes of dispersion, aggregation of Nanofluids. The KD2 Pro, fully portable thermal properties analyser, was used to measure thermal conductivity of nanofluids. The viscosity of the nanofluid was measured using a Brookfield Viscometer. The experimental results show that the thermal conductivity increases with an increase of particle volume fraction and the enhancement was observed to be 9.22% over the base fluid for volume concentration of 0.75%. From the experimental observations, enhancement in thermal conductivity is larger than the enhancement in viscosity.