Measuring thermal conductivity of fluids containing oxide nanoparticles

Oxide nanofluids were produced and their thermal conductivities were measured by a transient hot-wire method. The experimental results show that these nanofluids, containing a small amount of nanoparticles, have substantially higher thermal conductivities than the same liquids without nanoparticles. Comparisons between experiments and the Hamilton and Crosser model show that the model can predict the thermal conductivity of nanofluids containing large agglomerated Al2O3 particles. However, the model appears to be inadequate for nanofluids containing CuO particles. This suggests that not only particle shape but size is considered to be dominant in enhancing the thermal conductivity of nanofluids.