Nanofluids and critical heat flux, experimental and analytical study

In recent years, nanofluids have been attracting significant attention in the heat transfer research community. These fluids are obtained by suspending nanoparticles having sizes between 1 and 100 nm in regular fluids. It was found by several researchers that the thermal conductivity of these fluids can be significantly increased when compared to the same fluids without nanoparticles. Also, it was found that pool boiling critical heat flux increases in nanofluids. In this paper, our objective is to evaluate the impact of different nanoparticle characteristics including particle concentration, size and type on critical heat flux experimentally at saturated conditions. As a result, this work will document our experimental findings about pool boiling critical heat flux in different nanofluids. In addition, we will identify reasons behind the increase in the critical heat flux and present possible approaches for analytical modeling of critical heat flux in nanofluids at saturated conditions. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.