STUDY OF NANOFLUIDS AND THEIR APPLICATION IN HEAT TRANSFER

Abstract

Heat transfer enhancement has always been the area of improvement. A large amount of research is going by changing the design, shape and size of the devices which requires high quality materials. Nano-fluids can serve this purpose very correctly, because of their high heat transfer capability. Nano-fluids have higher thermal conductivity and higher surface area to volume ratio which helps in increasing the heat transfer. Nano-fluid thermal conductivity models are studied in present work. There are wide varieties of models available for calculation of effective thermal conductivity. Models studied in the present paper include the effect of nano-particle concentration, their shape and interfacial layers. From the study it is that most widely used thermal conductivity model is Maxwell model, it includes the effect of particle concentration and it is valid for low particle concentration value varying from 0 to 5%. Maxwell model is application for all types of nano-fluids. Present study also reveals that with increment in the nano-particle concentration heat transfer capability increases because the thermal conductivity of the nano-fluid increases Keywords: Heat transfer, nanofluids, nanomaterials and nanostructures