Nanofluids Essay

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Fine nanoparticles in the size range of 1-100 nm are suspended with the traditional heat transfer fluids like water, ethylene glycol, oil etc. is called nanofluid. These traditional heat transfer fluids are called base fluids. The term nanofluid was given by Choi in 1995 to describe new class of nanotechnology which is based on heat transfer fluids that exhibit thermal properties excellent to those of traditional heat transfer fluids. Nanofluids are supposed to have better heat transfer properties than traditional heat transfer fluids which make it useful in cooling application. Pump is use to circulate the coolant in most of the cooling systems. Thus pumping power requirement is an important issue in the selection of coolant. This pumping power requirement is based on the viscosity of fluid. Moreover the heat transfer coefficient of a fluid is also influenced by the viscosity of the fluid. The goal of nanofluid technology is to achieve the highest possible thermal properties at smallest possible concentration by uniform dispersion and stable suspension of nanoparticles (Das et al. 2008). The materials used for making nanoparticles are, such as oxide ceramics (Al2O3, CuO), TiO2, nitride ceramics (AlN,SiN), carbide ceramics (SiC,TiC), metals (Cu,Ag,Au), semiconductors (TiO2,SiC), Cabon nanotubes and composite materials such as alloyed nanoparticles Al60Cu30. 19 Nanoparticles can be manufactured by mainly two processes 1. Physical process 2.Chemical process. The physical process includes inert gas condensation and mechanical grinding. Chemical processes include chemical vapour deposition, chemical precipitation, micro emulsions, thermal spray and spray prolysis. 2.2 NANOFLUIDS APPLICATIONS Nanofluids are used in following fields (Wo... ... middle of paper ... .... Two Step Method C.G. Granqvist, and R.A. Buhrman (1976) found the two- step process in which nanoparticles are first produced as a dry powder by inert gas condensation and in the second step dispersion of dry nanoparticle powder into a base fluid, like water, oil or ethylene glycol. Romano et al (1997) reported an advantage of the two-step process is that the inert-gas condensation technique has been scaled up to commercial nanopowder production. A deficiency of this method is the 21 tendency of nanopowder to agglomerate during storage and dispersion in the base fluids, particularly with heavier metallic nanoparticles. Surfactants and other surface-stabilization additives can be used to achieve more homogeneous and more stable suspensions. In addition to mechanical mixing, ultra-sonic mixers can be used to break up agglomerates and give more uniform dispersions.

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