This article reports on the International Nanofluid Property Benchmark Exercise, or INPBE, in which the thermal conductivity of identical samples of colloidally stable dispersions of nanoparticles or “nanofluids,” was measured by over 30 organizations worldwide, using a variety of experimental approaches, including the transient hot wire method, steady-state methods, and optical methods. The nanofluids tested in the exercise were comprised of aqueous and nonaqueous basefluids, metal and metal oxide particles, near-spherical and elongated particles, at low and high particle concentrations. The data analysis reveals that the data from most organizations lie within a relatively narrow band (±10% or less) about the sample average with only few outliers. The thermal conductivity of the nanofluids was found to increase with particle concentration and aspect ratio, as expected from classical theory. There are (small) systematic differences in the absolute values of the nanofluid thermal conductivity among the various experimental approaches; however, such differences tend to disappear when the data are normalized to the measured thermal conductivity of the basefluid. The effective medium theory developed for dispersed particles by Maxwell in 1881 and recently generalized by Nan et al. [J. Appl. Phys. 81, 6692 (1997)], was found to be in good agreement with the experimental data, suggesting that no anomalous enhancement of thermal conductivity was achieved in the nanofluids tested in this exercise.

A Benchmark Study on the Thermal Conductivity of Nanofluids

A review on pore structure characterization in tight sandstones

Gas hydrates have received considerable attention due to their important role in flow assurance for the oil and gas industry, their extensive natural occurrence on Earth and extraterrestrial planets, and their significant applications in sustainable technologies including but not limited to gas and energy storage, gas separation, and water desalination Given not only their inherent structural flexibility depending on the type of guest gas molecules and formation conditions, but also the synthetic effects of a wide range of chemical additives on their properties, these variabilities could be exploited to optimise the role of gas hydrates This includes increasing their industrial applications, understanding and utilising their role in Nature, identifying potential methods for safely extracting natural gases stored in naturally occurring hydrates within the Earth, and for developing green technologies This review summarizes the different properties of gas hydrates as well as their formation and dissociation kinetics and then reviews the fast-growing literature reporting their role and applications in the aforementioned fields, mainly concentrating on advances during the last decade Challenges, limitations, and future perspectives of each field are briefly discussed The overall objective of this review is to provide readers with an extensive overview of gas hydrates that we hope will stimulate further work on this riveting field

Gas hydrates in sustainable chemistry

A review of recent advances in thermophysical properties at the nanoscale: From solid state to colloids

Nanofluids effects on the evaporation rate in a solar still equipped with a heat exchanger

Electrical conductivity models in saturated porous media: A review

Fracture network and fractured porous media as well as their transport properties have received great attentions in many fields from engineering application and basic theoretical researches. Fracture will dynamically extend in length and aperture to form complex fracture network under some external conditions such as percussion drilling, wave propagation, desiccation and hydrofracturing. The complexity of fracture network can be well quantitatively characterized by fractal dimension. In this work, the dynamic characterization of fracture network extension in porous media under drying process is measured by the improved box-counting technique, and fractal dimensions of fracture network are respectively related to drying time, average aperture, moisture content and fracture porosity. The fractal dimension increases exponentially with drying time and average aperture, and decreases with moisture content in the form of power law. Specially, the fractal dimension is approximatively increased with porosity in t...

Fractal characterization of dynamic fracture network extension in porous media

Archie's equation is an empirical electrical conductivity-porosity model that has been used to predict the formation factor of porous rock for more than 70 years. However, the physical interpretation of its parameters, e.g., the cementation exponent m, remains questionable. In this study, a theoretical electrical conductivity equation is derived based on the fractal characteristics of porous media. The proposed model is expressed in terms of the tortuosity fractal dimension (DT), the pore fractal dimension (Df), the electrical conductivity of the pore liquid, and the porosity. The empirical parameter m is then determined from physically based parameters, such as DT and Df. Furthermore, a distinct interrelationship between DT and Df is obtained. We find a reasonably good match between the predicted formation factor by our model and experimental data.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2015GL064460

Wei Wei

Papers

Electrical conductivity models in saturated porous media: A review

Fractal characterization of dynamic fracture network extension in porous media

An electrical conductivity model for fractal porous media

Recent developments on fractal-based approaches to nanofluids and nanoparticle aggregation

Shale gas transport model in 3D fractal porous media with variable pore sizes