A review on applications and challenges of nanofluids
01 Apr 2011-Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews (RENEWABLE AND SUSTAINABLE ENERGY REVIEWS)-Vol. 15, Iss: 3, pp 1646-1668
TL;DR: It has been found nan ofluids have a much higher and strongly temperature-dependent thermal conductivity at very low particle concentrations than conventional fluids, which can be considered as one of the key parameters for enhanced performances for many of the applications of nanofluids.
Abstract: Nanofluids are potential heat transfer fluids with enhanced thermophysical properties and heat transfer performance can be applied in many devices for better performances (i.e. energy, heat transfer and other performances). In this paper, a comprehensive literature on the applications and challenges of nanofluids have been compiled and reviewed. Latest up to date literatures on the applications and challenges in terms of PhD and Master thesis, journal articles, conference proceedings, reports and web materials have been reviewed and reported. Recent researches have indicated that substitution of conventional coolants by nanofluids appears promising. Specific application of nanofluids in engine cooling, solar water heating, cooling of electronics, cooling of transformer oil, improving diesel generator efficiency, cooling of heat exchanging devices, improving heat transfer efficiency of chillers, domestic refrigerator-freezers, cooling in machining, in nuclear reactor and defense and space have been reviewed and presented. Authors also critically analyzed some of the applications and identified research gaps for further research. Moreover, challenges and future directions of applications of nanofluids have been reviewed and presented in this paper. Based on results available in the literatures, it has been found nanofluids have a much higher and strongly temperature-dependent thermal conductivity at very low particle concentrations than conventional fluids. This can be considered as one of the key parameters for enhanced performances for many of the applications of nanofluids. Because of its superior thermal performances, latest up to date literatures on this property have been summarized and presented in this paper as well. However, few barriers and challenges that have been identified in this review must be addressed carefully before it can be fully implemented in the industrial applications.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the effects of nanofluids on the performance of solar collectors and solar water heaters from the efficiency, economic and environmental considerations viewpoints, and made some suggestions to use the nanoparticles in different solar thermal systems such as photovoltaic/thermal systems, solar ponds, solar thermoelectric cells, and so on.
1,069 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a review summarizes recent researches on synthesis, thermophysical properties, heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics, possible applications and challenges of hybrid nanofluids, and showed that proper hybridization may make the hybrid nanoparticles very promising for heat transfer enhancement, however, lot of research works are still needed in the fields of preparation and stability, characterization and applications to overcome the challenges.
Abstract: 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.
846 citations
Cites background from "A review on applications and challe..."
...However, the dielectric strength of transformer oil can be improved by mono-suspending of diamond, TiO2 and magnetic nanoparticles [32,92,93]....
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...[2–3,12–64])....
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...Stability is one of the major problems of nanofluids [3,9,32], which have restricted to commercial use....
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...Application areas are widely varied such as electronic cooling, engine cooling/vehicle thermal management, generator cooling, coolant in machining, welding, nuclear system cooling, lubrication, thermal storage, solar heating, cooling and heating in buildings, transformer cooling, biomedical, drug reduction, heat pipe, refrigeration, space, defense and ships [3,12,21,32,33,42,52,54,55,59,104]....
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TL;DR: Nanofluids have seen enormous growth in popularity since they were proposed by Choi in 1995 as mentioned in this paper, and there were nearly 700 research articles where the term nanofluid was used in the title, showing rapid growth from 2006 (175) and 2001 (10).
Abstract: Nanofluids—a simple product of the emerging world of nanotechnology—are suspensions of nanoparticles (nominally 1–100 nm in size) in conventional base fluids such as water, oils, or glycols. Nanofluids have seen enormous growth in popularity since they were proposed by Choi in 1995. In the year 2011 alone, there were nearly 700 research articles where the term nanofluid was used in the title, showing rapid growth from 2006 (175) and 2001 (10). The first decade of nanofluid research was primarily focused on measuring and modeling fundamental thermophysical properties of nanofluids (thermal conductivity, density, viscosity, heat transfer coefficient). Recent research, however, explores the performance of nanofluids in a wide variety of other applications. Analyzing the available body of research to date, this article presents recent trends and future possibilities for nanofluids research and suggests which applications will see the most significant improvement from employing nanofluids.
679 citations
Additional excerpts
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Xi'an Jiaotong University1, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad2, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi3, University of Monastir4, Shahid Beheshti University5, University of Rennes6, Clarkson University7, North Carolina State University8, University of Vermont9, Iran University of Science and Technology10, University of New South Wales11, Royal Society12, Quaid-i-Azam University13, King Abdulaziz University14, University of Tehran15, Babeș-Bolyai University16
TL;DR: A review of the latest developments in modeling of nanofluid flows and heat transfer with an emphasis on 3D simulations can be found in this paper, where the main models used to calculate the thermophysical properties of Nanofluids are reviewed.
659 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a detailed review on theoretical models/correlations of conventional models related to nanofluid viscosity is presented, and the existing experimental results about the Nanofluids viscoities show clearly that viscoity augmented accordingly with an increase of volume concentration and decreased with the temperature rise.
527 citations
Cites background from "A review on applications and challe..."
...Some review papers [43,44] emphasized only the thermal conductivity of nanofluids....
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References
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors used a Brookfield rotating viscometer to measure the viscosities of the dispersed fluids with γ-alumina (Al2O3) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) particles at a 10% volume concentration.
Abstract: Turbulent friction and heat transfer behaviors of dispersed fluids (i.e., uttrafine metallic oxide particles suspended in water) in a circular pipe were investigated experimentally. Viscosity measurements were also conducted using a Brookfield rotating viscometer. Two different metallic oxide particles, γ-alumina (Al2O3) and titanium dioxide (TiO2), with mean diameters of 13 and 27 nm, respectively, were used as suspended particles. The Reynolds and Prandtl numbers varied in the ranges l04-I05 and 6.5-12.3, respectively. The viscosities of the dispersed fluids with γ-Al2O3 and TiO2 particles at a 10% volume concentration were approximately 200 and 3 times greater than that of water, respectively. These viscosity results were significantly larger than the predictions from the classical theory of suspension rheology. Darcy friction factors for the dispersed fluids of the volume concentration ranging from 1% to 3% coincided well with Kays' correlation for turbulent flow of a single-phase fluid. The Nusselt n...
3,730 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, it was shown that a "nanofluid" consisting of copper nanometer-sized particles dispersed in ethylene glycol has a much higher effective thermal conductivity than either pure or pure glycol or even polyethylene glycol containing the same volume fraction of dispersed oxide nanoparticles.
Abstract: It is shown that a “nanofluid” consisting of copper nanometer-sized particles dispersed in ethylene glycol has a much higher effective thermal conductivity than either pure ethylene glycol or ethylene glycol containing the same volume fraction of dispersed oxide nanoparticles. The effective thermal conductivity of ethylene glycol is shown to be increased by up to 40% for a nanofluid consisting of ethylene glycol containing approximately 0.3 vol % Cu nanoparticles of mean diameter <10 nm. The results are anomalous based on previous theoretical calculations that had predicted a strong effect of particle shape on effective nanofluid thermal conductivity, but no effect of either particle size or particle thermal conductivity.
3,551 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a transient hot-wire method was used to measure the thermal conductivity of a small amount of nanoparticles and the experimental results showed that these nanoparticles have substantially higher thermal conductivities than the same liquids without nanoparticles.
Abstract: 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 Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} 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.
2,811 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors have produced nanotube-in-oil suspensions and measured their effective thermal conductivity, which is anomalously greater than theoretical predictions and is nonlinear with nanotubes loadings.
Abstract: We have produced nanotube-in-oil suspensions and measured their effective thermal conductivity. The measured thermal conductivity is anomalously greater than theoretical predictions and is nonlinear with nanotube loadings. The anomalous phenomena show the fundamental limits of conventional heat conduction models for solid/liquid suspensions. We have suggested physical concepts for understanding the anomalous thermal behavior of nanotube suspensions. In comparison with other nanostructured materials dispersed in fluids, the nanotubes provide the highest thermal conductivity enhancement, opening the door to a wide range of nanotube applications.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed two different approaches for deriving heat transfer correlation of the nanofluid, and investigated the mechanism of heat transfer enhancement of the nano-fluid.
2,355 citations