Measurement of the Thermal Conductivity of Nano-fluid for the advanced heat exchanger

The enhancement of heat transfer has been widely investigated to provide an effective way to cool down the modern electronic devices. Among the methods, Choi discovered a large amount of increase of thermal conductivity when nano sized particles were suspended in the fluid. It was first introduced by Masuda as a potential heat transfer enhancement media and since then, many researchers have investigated the nanofluids phenomena. Many researchers reported in substantially increasing the thermal conductivity of fluids by adding small amounts of suspended metallic oxide nanoparticles of Cu, CuO, Al2O3 and carbon nano-tube. Masuda reported that the use Al2O3 particles of 13 nm at 4.3% volume fraction increased the thermal conductivity of water by 30%. For carbon nano-tube nanofluids shows even greater enhancement. Xie et al. measured the thermal conductivity of carbon nanotube suspended in organic liquid and water with the enhancement of 10-20%. Recent studies have shown that inserting just 1% concentration of nano-particles sometimes increases about maximum 40% of thermal conductivity. However, there is still few experiments done for TiO2 nanoparticles. Murshed found that the enhancement of thermal conductivity shows about 30% with 15nm in diameter with maximum 5% volume fraction and about 40% enhancement is observed using 15nmD x 40nm rod-shape nanoparticles of TiO2. The present experimental shows that a 20% maximum of enhancement in thermal conductivity using TiO2 of 10nm for 3% volume fraction. Theses results are compared with previous research with theoretical models. As the first step of the heat transfer of nano fluid, the theories related to the nanofluids investigations have been discussed to understand not only the mechanism of thermal conductivity measurement, but also to understand the nanofluid behavior. Colloidal stability is the key to the nanofluid considered to prevent the agglomeration. Through the results, we will discuss the importance of this matter. The measurement of the thermal conductivity of the nano fluid is investigated here by developing the sensor body and circuit