A review on hybrid nanofluids: Recent research, development and applications

Researches on the nanofluids have been increased very rapidly over the past decade. In spite of some inconsistency in the reported results and insufficient understanding of the mechanism of the heat transfer in nanofluids, it has been emerged as a promising heat transfer fluid. In the continuation of nanofluids research, the researchers have also tried to use hybrid nanofluid recently, which is engineered by suspending dissimilar nanoparticles either in mixture or composite form. The idea of using hybrid nanofluids is to further improvement of heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics by trade-off between advantages and disadvantages of individual suspension, attributed to good aspect ratio, better thermal network and synergistic effect of nanomaterials. This review summarizes recent researches on synthesis, thermophysical properties, heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics, possible applications and challenges of hybrid nanofluids. Review showed that proper hybridization may make the hybrid nanofluids very promising for heat transfer enhancement, however, lot of research works is still needed in the fields of preparation and stability, characterization and applications to overcome the challenges. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.