Convective Heat Transfer in Water-based Alumina Nanofluids
Roberts, N. A. (Nicholas A.)
:
2009-03-30
Abstract
Nanofluids are solutions of a small fraction of suspended nanoparticles in a bulk fluid. Nanofluids have shown
great promise as heat transfer fluids over typically used bulk fluids and fluids with micron sized particles. The
nanoparticles do not settle in the fluid and do not cause clogging or damage to surfaces that is seen with
micron sized particles. In the current work we compare the performance of different mass loadings of water-
based alumina nanofluids in commercially available electronics cooling systems to that of pure water. The
commercially available systems is a water block used for liquid cooling of a computational processing unit. The
size of the nanoparticles in the study is varied from 10 nm to 150 nm. Results show a moderate enhancement in
thermal conductivity and convection heat transfer in the laminar flow regime with increasing mass loading of
nanoparticles up to 1% by volume.