On the quenching of steel and zircaloy spheres in water-based nanofluids with alumina,silica and diamond nanoparticles

The quenching curves (temperature vs time) for small (∼1 cm) metallic spheres exposed to pure water and water-based nanofluids with alumina, silica and diamond nanoparticles at low concentrations (?0.1 vol%) were acquired experimentally. Both saturated (ΔT_sub = 0 °C) and highly subcooled (ΔT_sub = 70 °C) conditions were explored. The spheres were made of stainless steel and zircaloy, and were quenched from an initial temperature of ∼1000 °C. The results show that the quenching behavior in nanofluids is nearly identical to that in pure water. However, it was found that some nanoparticles accumulate on the sphere surface, which results in destabilization of the vapor film in subsequent tests with the same sphere, thus greatly accelerating the quenching process. The entire boiling curves were obtained from the quenching curves using the inverse heat transfer method, and revealed that alumina and silica nanoparticle deposition on the surface increases the critical heat flux and minimum heat flux temperature, while diamond nanoparticle deposition has a minimal effect on the boiling curve. The possible mechanisms by which the nanoparticles affect the quenching process were analyzed. It appears that surface roughness increase and wettability enhancement due to nanoparticle deposition may be responsible for the premature disruption of film boiling and the acceleration of quenching. The basic results were also confirmed by quench tests with rodlets.     

Buoyant Marangoni convection of nanofluids in square cavity

The buoyant Marangoni convection heat transfer in a differentially heated cavity is numerically studied. The cavity is filled with water-Ag, water-Cu, water-Al₂O₃, and water-TiO₂ nanofluids. The governing equations are based on the equations involving the stream function, vorticity, and temperature. The dimensionless forms of the governing equations are solved by the finite difference (FD) scheme consisting of the alternating direction implicit (ADI) method and the tri-diagonal matrix algorithm (TDMA). It is found that the increase in the nanoparticle concentration leads to the decrease in the flow rates in the secondary cells when the convective thermocapillary and the buoyancy force have similar strength. A critical Marangoni number exists, below which increasing the Marangoni number decreases the average Nusselt number, and above which increasing the Marangoni number increases the average Nusselt number. The nanoparticles play a crucial role in the critical Marangoni number.     

Synthesis and thermal conductivity of microfluidic copper nanofluids

A microfluidic chemical solution method is developed for the synthesizing Cu nanofluids.The method replaces batch-based macroreactors in the conventional chemical solution method by continuous-flow microfluidic microreactors,thereby enabling the synthesis of nanofluids with various microstructures.The Cu nanofluids synthesized by this technology show a better stability,remaining stable even after more than 100h standing.The measured thermal conductivity shows that the presence of nanoparticles can either upgrade or downgrade fluid conductivity,a phenomenon predicted by the recent thermal-wave theory of nanofluids.     

Conception for enhanced mass transport in binary nanofluids

Besides their application in enhancing heat transfer, suspended nanoparticles have been found to improve mass transfer process inside binary nanofluids. The concepts of enhanced mass transfer in binary nanofluids are involved. By means of the heat and mass transfer analogy, the approaches for determining the mass diffusivity and mass transfer coefficient are proposed and discussed.     

Stability and thermal conductivity of water-based carbon nanotube nanofluids

Water-based nanofluids were prepared with multi walled carbon nanotubes(MWCNTs) of different lengths in concentrations of 0.1,0.25 and 0.5 vol%.To improve their dispersibility,pristine MWCNTs were functionalized and cut into small lengths by reflux in an oxidizing mixture of 3:1 sulfuric and nitric acids.The initial length of the carbon nanotubes(CNTs;10-15 μm) was reduced to 203,171 and 134 nm after1,2 and 4h of reflux,respectively.Surface modification and the reduced length of the CNTs,improved the stability of the nanofluids with no significant sedimentation observed after 80 days.Furthermore,the thermal conductivities of nanofluids prepared using refluxed CNTs,were higher than that of the pristine CNTs.The thermal conductivity also increased with the nanofluid temperature.The nanofluid prepared with 1 h refluxed CNTs had the highest thermal conductivity.The enhanced thermal conductivity and stability of the nanofluids was attributed to the decreased length of CNTs.     

Melting heat transfer in Cu-water and Ag-water nanofluids flow with homogeneous-heterogeneous reactions

This article addresses melting heat transfer in magnetohydrodynamics(MHD)nanofluid flows by a rotating disk. The analysis is performed in Cu-water and Ag-water nanofluids. Thermal radiation, viscous dissipation, and chemical reactions impacts are added in the nanofluid model. Appropriate transformations lead to the nondimensionalized boundary layer equations. Series solutions for the resulting equations are computed.The role of pertinent parameters on the velocity, temperature, and concentration is analyzed in the outputs. It is revealed that the larger melting parameter enhances the velocity profile while the temperature profile decreases. The surface drag force and heat transfer rate are computed under the influence of pertinent parameters. Furthermore, the homogeneous reaction parameter serves to decrease the surface concentration.     

Mixed convection heat transfer in horizontal channel filled with nanofluids

The laminar fully developed nanofluid flow and heat transfer in a horizonal channel are investigated. Highly accurate solutions for the temperature and nanoparticle concentration distributions are obtained. The effects of the Brownian motion parameter N _b, the thermophoresis parameter N _t, and the Lewis number Le on the temperature and nanoparticle concentration distributions are discussed. The current analysis shows that the nanoparticles can improve the heat transfer characteristics significantly for this flow problem.     

Boiling characteristics in small vertical tubes with closed bottom for nanofluids and nanoparticle-suspensions

An experimental study was carried out to understand the nucleate boiling characteristics and the critical heat flux (CHF) of water, the water based nanofluids and the water based nanoparticle-suspensions in vertical small heated tubes with a closed bottom. Here, the nanofluids consisted of the base liquid, the CuO nanoparticles and the surfactant. The nanoparticle-suspensions consisted of the base liquid and CuO nanoparticles. The surfactant was sodium dodecyl benzene sulfate. The study focused on the influence of the nanoparticles and surfactant on the nucleate boiling characteristics and the CHF. The experimental results indicated that the nanoparticle concentrations of the nanofluids and nanoparticle-suspensions in the tubes do not change during the boiling processes; the nanoparticles in the evaporated liquid are totally carried away by the steam. The boiling heat transfer rates of nanofluids are poorer than that of the base liquid. However, the boiling heat transfer rates of nanoparticle-suspensions are better than that of the base liquid. Comparing with the base liquid, the CHF of the nanofluids and the nanoparticle-suspensions is higher. The CHF is only related to nanoparticle mass concentration when the tube length and the tube diameter are fixed. The experiment confirm that there is a thin nanoparticle coating layer on the heated surface after the nanofluids boiling test but there is no coating layer on the heated surface after the nanoparticle-suspensions boiling test. This coating layer is the main reason that deteriorates the boiling heat transfer rates of nanofluids. An empirical correlation was proposed for predicting the CHF of nanofluids boiling in the vertical tubes with closed bottom.     

Heat transfer of nanofluids considering nanoparticle migration and second-order slip velocity

The heat transfer of a magnetohydrodynamics nanofluid inside an annulus considering the second-order slip condition and nanoparticle migration is theoretically investigated.A second-order slip condition,which appropriately represents the non-equilibrium region near the interface,is prescribed rather than the no-slip condition and the linear Navier slip condition.To impose different temperature gradients,the outer wall is subjected to q2,the inner wall is subjected to q1,and q1 q2.A modified two-component four-equation non-homogeneous equilibrium model is employed for the nanofluid,which have been reduced to two-point ordinary boundary value differential equations in the consideration of the thermally and hydrodynamically fully developed flow.The homotopy analysis method(HAM) is employed to solve the equations,and the h-curves are plotted to verify the accuracy and efficiency of the solutions.Moreover,the effects of the physical factors on the flow and heat transfer are discussed in detail,and the semi-analytical relation between N uB and NBT is obtained.     

Lattice Boltzmann simulation of heat transfer and fluid flow in a microchannel with nanofluids

Mathematical modeling is performed to simulate forced convection flow of 47 nm- Al₂O₃/water nanofluids in a microchannel using the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). Single channel flow and conjugate heat transfer problem are taken into consideration and the heat transfer rate using a nanofluid is examined. Simulations are conducted at low Reynolds numbers (2 ≤ Re ≤ 16). The computed average Nusselt number, which is associated with the thermal conductivity of nanofluid, is in the range of 0.6 ￡ [`(Nu)] ￡ 13 0.6 \le \overline{Nu} \le 13 . Results indicate that the average Nusselt number increases with the increase of Reynolds number and particle volume concentration. The fluid temperature distribution is more uniform with the use of nanofluid than that of pure water. Furthermore, great deviations of computed Nusselt numbers using different models associated with the physical properties of a nanofluid are revealed. The results of LBM agree well with the classical CFD method for predictions of flow and heat transfer in a single channel and a microchannel heat sink concerning the conjugate heat transfer problem, and consequently LBM is robust and promising for practical applications.     

Analytical and numerical study of buoyancy-driven convection in a vertical enclosure filled with nanofluids

This paper presents an analytical and numerical study of natural convection of nanofluids contained in a rectangular enclosure subject to uniform heat flux along the vertical sides. Governing parameters of the problem under study are the thermal Rayleigh number Ra, the Prandtl number Pr, the aspect ratio of the cavity A and the solid volume fraction of nanoparticles, Φ. Three types of nanoparticles are taken into consideration: Cu, Al₂O₃ and TiO₂. Various models are used for calculating the effective viscosity and thermal conductivity of nanofluids. In the first part of the analytical study, a scale analysis is made for the boundary layer regime situation. In the second part, an analytical solution based on the parallel flow approximation is reported for tall enclosures (A ≫ 1). In the boundary layer regime a good agreement is obtained between the predictions of the scale analysis and those of the analytical solution. Solutions for the flow fields, temperature distributions and Nusselt numbers are obtained explicitly in terms of the governing parameters of the problem. A numerical study of the same phenomenon, obtained by solving the complete system of the governing equations, is also conducted. A good agreement is found between the analytical predictions and the numerical simulations.     

Electro-magneto-hydrodynamic flow of couple stress nanofluids in micro-peristaltic channel with slip and convective conditions

This study explores the effects of electro-magneto-hydrodynamics, Hall currents, and convective and slip boundary conditions on the peristaltic propulsion of nanofluids(considered as couple stress nanofluids) through porous symmetric microchannels. The phenomena of energy and mass transfer are considered under thermal radiation and heat source/sink. The governing equations are modeled and non-dimensionalized under appropriate dimensionless quantities. The resulting system is solved numerically w...     

Numerical feasibility study of utilizing nanofluids in laminar natural convection inside enclosures

Laminar natural convective heat transfer of nanofluids inside an enclosure is numerically investigated considering the thermal dispersion effect of the nanoparticles. Feasibility of applying nanofluids instead of pure liquids in natural convective, which is a discrepancy issue between the previous numerical and experimental works, is examined. Results confirm the previous experimental results of general deterioration in heat transfer rate. Discussions, justifications and correlations for average Nusselt number are presented.     

Measurement of temperature-dependent thermal conductivity and viscosity of TiO2-water nanofluids

Nanofluid is an innovative heat transfer fluid with superior potential for enhancing the heat transfer performance of conventional fluids. Many attempts have been made to investigate its thermal conductivity and viscosity, which are important thermophysical properties. No definitive agreements have emerged, however, about these properties. This article reports the thermal conductivity and dynamic viscosity of nanofluids experimentally. TiO₂ nanoparticles dispersed in water with volume concentration of 0.2–2 vol.% are used in the present study. A transient hot-wire apparatus is used for measuring the thermal conductivity of nanofluids whereas the Bohlin rotational rheometer (Malvern Instrument) is used to measure the viscosity of nanofluids. The data are collected for temperatures ranging from 15 °C to 35 °C. The results show that the measured viscosity and thermal conductivity of nanofluids increased as the particle concentrations increased and are higher than the values of the base liquids. Furthermore, thermal conductivity of nanofluids increased with increasing nanofluid temperatures and, conversely, the viscosity of nanofluids decreased with increasing temperature of nanofluids. Moreover, the measured thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids are quite different from the predicted values from the existing correlations and the data reported by other researchers. Finally, new thermophysical correlations are proposed for predicting the thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids.     

Investigation of heat transfer of nanofluids in turbulent flow in a cylindrical channel

Turbulent flow of nanofluids based on the distilled water with aluminum and silicon oxide particles of different sizes in a cylindrical channel is studied. The results of the measurements of the heat transfer coefficient and the pressure difference are presented. The maximum volume concentration of the particles was not greater than two percents. The dependence of the heat transfer coefficient on the nanoparticle concentration and their sizes and material is studied. It is shown that a considerable increase in the nanofluid heat transfer coefficient, compared with the corresponding value for water, may generally be expected. At the same time, the heat transfer coefficient of a nanofluid depends on the nanoparticle size and material; because of this, under certain conditions the nanofluid heat transfer coefficient can turn out to be lower than that of the baseline fluid. Situations, when this can occur, are established. It is for the first time experimentally shown that the nanofluid viscosity coefficient depends not only on the nanoparticle size but also on its material.     

Magnetic nanoparticles and concentrated magnetic nanofluids： Synthesis, properties and some applications

This paper reviews some recent results concerning chemical synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles and preparation of various types of magnetic nanofluids. Structural properties and behaviour in external magnetic field of magnetic nanofluids will be emphasized with relation to their use in leakage-free rotating seals and in biomedical applications.     

Multiphysics of multifunctional nanofluids based on different oxides nanoparticles and glycerol fluid

Nanofluid (NF) materials consisting of glycerol (Gly) and different inorganic nano oxides (TiO₂, ZnO, Al₂O₃, and SiO₂ for the oxides concentration of 0.01 wt% to the weight of Gly base fluid) were prepared by a two-step method through ultrasonic cavitation process. These nanofluids were investigated by employing an X-ray diffractometer (XRD), ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectrophotometer, 20 Hz to 1 MHz frequency range dielectric relaxation spectroscopy (DRS), ultrasonic interferometer, and rotational viscometer. The multiphysics of these nanofluids includes structural and optical properties, dielectric permittivity, electrical conductivity, conductivity relaxation, ultrasound velocity, adiabatic compressibility, acoustic impedance, viscosity, density, thermal conductivity, and viscoacoustic relaxation were characterized. The XRD patterns identified monodispersed and stable suspensions of these different characteristic nanoparticles in the hydrogen-bonded 3D supramolecular structure of ultra-high viscous glycerol fluid which were supported by their UV–Vis absorbance analyses. The energy band gap values of the TiO₂ and ZnO containing nanofluids were found primarily ruled by the characteristic optical properties of these oxides nanomaterials. The complex dielectric and various electrical functions studied at 25 °C revealed that the suspension of different oxide nanoparticles in the glycerol fluid increased the static permittivity whereas reduced the direct current electrical conductivity which showed strong conductivity relaxation process dependence. The rheological measurements of the formulated nanofluids were performed over a shear rate range of 0.4–40 s⁻¹ at temperatures of 25–55 °C. The linear relationship between shear rate and shear stress and also the shear rate-independent viscosity revealed the Newtonian behaviour of these nanofluids. The shear viscosity non-linearly decreased with the increase of temperature and exhibited the Arrhenius behaviour for all different oxides containing Gly-based nanofluids. The acoustic parameters of the nanofluids were altered unevenly with types of nano oxides and inferred some structure-property correlations. The promising technologically useable properties of these nanofluids were expected to impact their potential applications in optoelectronics, UV-blocking, sensing, nanodielectrics, energy storing and electric insulation, heat transfer systems, and also in materials processing for the development of innovative soft condensed devices.     

Correlation of viscosity in nanofluids using genetic algorithm-neural network (GA-NN)

An accurate and efficient artificial neural network based on genetic algorithm (GA) is developed for predicting of nanofluids viscosity. The genetic algorithm (GA) is used to optimize the neural network parameters. The experimental viscosity in eight nanofluids in the range 238.15–343.15 K with the nanoparticle volume fraction up to 9.4% was used. The obtained results show that the GA-NN model has a good agreement with the experimental data with absolute deviation 2.48% and high correlation coefficient (R ≥ 0.98). The Results also reveals that GA-NN model outperforms to the conventional neural nets in predicting the viscosity of nanofluids with the overall percentage improvement of 39%. Furthermore, the results have also been compared with Einstein, Batchelor and Masoumi et al. models. The findings demonstrate that this model is an efficient method and have better accuracy.     

Numerical analysis of transient laminar forced convection of nanofluids in circular ducts

In this study, forced convection heat transfer characteristics of nanofluids are investigated by numerical analysis of incompressible transient laminar flow in a circular duct under step change in wall temperature and wall heat flux. The thermal responses of the system are obtained by solving energy equation under both transient and steady-state conditions for hydro-dynamically fully-developed flow. In the analyses, temperature dependent thermo-physical properties are also considered. In the numerical analysis, Al₂O₃/water nanofluid is assumed as a homogenous single-phase fluid. For the effective thermal conductivity of nanofluids, Hamilton–Crosser model is used together with a model for Brownian motion in the analysis which takes the effects of temperature and the particle diameter into account. Temperature distributions across the tube for a step jump of wall temperature and also wall heat flux are obtained for various times during the transient calculations at a given location for a constant value of Peclet number and a particle diameter. Variations of thermal conductivity in turn, heat transfer enhancement is obtained at various times as a function of nanoparticle volume fractions, at a given nanoparticle diameter and Peclet number. The results are given under transient and steady-state conditions; steady-state conditions are obtained at larger times and enhancements are found by comparison to the base fluid heat transfer coefficient under the same conditions.