Heat transfer enhancement with iron oxide nanoparticle based ferrofluids

Abstract

Nanofluids are colloidal compounds, where the solid phase material is composed of nano sized particles, and the liquid phase can potentially be any fluid but aqueous media are common. As a common nanofluid type, ferrofluids are formed by holding solid nanoparticles in suspension by weak intermolecular forces and may be produced from materials with different magnetic properties. Heat transfer performance of ferrofluids is one of the crucial properties among many others that should be analyzed and considered for their wide range of applications. For this purpose, experiments were conducted in order to characterize heat transfer properties of ironoxide based ferrofluids flowing through a microchannel. In this study, convective heat transfer experiments were conducted in order to characterize convective heat transfer enhancements with Lauric acid coated ironoxide (Fe3O4) nanoparticle based ferrofluids, which have volumetric fractions between 0%- ∼5% and average particle diameter of 25 nm, in a 2.5 cm long hypodermic stainless steel microtube with an inner diameter of 514 μm and an outer diameter of 819 μm. Heat fluxes up to 184 W/cm2 were applied to the system at three different flow rates (1ml/s, 0.62ml/s and 0.36 ml/s). Promising results were obtained from this study, which are suggesting the use of ferrofluids for heat transfer applications can be advantageous.