(109g) Enhancement of Thermal Transport in Water and Ethylene Glycol Using Al2o3 Nanoparticles

Current research demonstrates a significant increase in the thermal conductivity of suspensions containing small volume fractions (<5%) of metal or metal oxide nanoparticles compared with the base liquids alone. Due to incomplete discussion of sample preparation and characterization in a significant portion of literature to date, there is some ambiguity in what the published data actually represents. This paper provides thermal conductivity measurements for two types of nanofluids, Al203-deionized water and Al203-ethylene glycol, with a well described sample preparation method. The nanofluids were loaded at 2% by volume with 44 nm Al203 nanoparticles. Thermal conductivity values were measured using the transient hot wire (THW) method, the nanoparticle size was obtained by small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and the morphology was determined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM).