Study of the effect of particles size and volume fraction concentration on the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of Al2O3 nanofluids

In this study we present new data for the thermal conductivity enhancement in four nanofluids containing 11, 25, 50, and 63 nm diameter Aluminum oxide (Al2O3) nanoparticles in distilled water. The nanofluids were prepared using single step method (that is, by dispersing nanoparticle directly in base fluid) which was gathered in ultrasonic device for approximately 7 h. The transient hot-wire laser beam displacement technique was used to measure the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of the prepared nanofluids. The thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity were obtained by fitting the experimental data to the numerical data simulated for Al2O3 in distilled water. The results show that, the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity enhancement of nanofluids increases as the particle size increases. Thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity enhancement of Al2O3 nanofluids was increase as the volume fraction concentration increases. This enhancement attributed to the many factors such as, ballistic energy, nature of heat transport in nanoparticle, and interfacial layer between solid/fluids.