Simultaneous Measurement of Thermal Conductivity, Thermal Diffusivity, and Specific Heat of Nanofluids

Effective thermal conductivity, effective thermal diffusivity, and effective specific heat of nanofluids were simultaneously measured by using a transient double hot-wire technique. Several types of nanofluids were prepared by suspending different volume percentages (1 to 5%) of titanium dioxide (TiO2), aluminum oxide (Al2O3), and aluminum (Al) nanoparticles in ethylene glycol and engine oil. While effective specific heats of these nanofluids decrease substantially with nanoparticle volume fraction, the enhanced effective thermal conductivity and effective thermal diffusivity were found to increase significantly with increasing volumetric loading of these nanoparticles. The increments of the effective thermal diffusivity of nanofluids were slightly larger than their effective thermal conductivity values. Predictions of the effective specific heats of nanofluids by the volume fraction mixture rule-based model showed fairly good agreement (within 7%) with the experimental results. Besides particle volume fraction, particle material, particle shape and the type of base fluid were identified to have influence on these properties of nanofluids. Both the calibration results of the base fluids (system accurate to <= 2.7%) and uncertainty analysis (uncertainty <= 2.1%) indicate high accuracy of using the double hot-wire method to simultaneously measure the effective thermal conductivity, effective thermal diffusivity, and specific heat of nanofluids.