Journal of Nanoparticle Research

, Volume 13, Issue 7, pp 3075–3083 | Cite as

Investigation of thermal transport in colloidal silica dispersions (nanofluids)

Research paper
First Online:
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Accepted:

Abstract

Thermal conductivity enhancement in colloidal silica dispersions (nanofluids) is investigated experimentally using a novel optical technique. The effects of nanoparticle size, concentration, and state of aggregation are examined. New data on well dispersed systems are compared to published data obtained using the more conventional transient hot-wire technique and good agreement was found. Experimental results are also compared with model predictions for relative thermal conductivity based on effective medium theory. For systems composed of larger diameter nanoparticles (~30 nm), good agreement was found between the measured thermal conductivity enhancement and that predicted by the classical Maxwell-Garnett model. For systems composed of smaller nanoparticles (∼10 and 20 nm), thermal conductivity enhancement was reduced by as much as 10%, presumably because interfacial thermal resistance effects become important. Measurements on two systems that were induced to form gels exhibited an increase in thermal conductivity of approximately 5% relative to the well-dispersed systems. The observed increase in thermal conductivity is larger than that predicted by a recently proposed model for aggregated nanofluids.

Keywords

Nanofluids Thermal conductivity Colloidal silica Forced Rayleigh scattering 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the National Science Foundation for partial financial support of this study through grant CBET-0812804. The authors also wish to acknowledge useful discussions with Professor J.D. Schieber.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Chemical Engineering and Biological EngineeringIllinois Institute of TechnologyChicagoUSA

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