Enhancement of thermal conductivity of nanofluid using CuCr dispersant

Nanofluids are suspension of nanoparticles (<100 nm) in conventional heat transfer fluids like water, ethylene glycol, etc. They often show enhanced thermal conductivity as compared to the base fluids. In the present work, thermal conductivity enhancement of Cu-Cr dispersed nanofluids is being studied by experiments as well as modeling. The modeling of the nanofluid is based on the mechanism that evenly dispersed nanoparticles within a nanofluid undergo Brownian motion. The heat pickup by the nanoparticles from the heat source during collision was estimated from MD simulation. This has been coupled with stochastic stimulation to estimate thermal conductivity enhancement.In experiments, the Cu-1%Cr, Cu-3%Cr, Cu-5%Cr, Cu-10%Cr, Cu-Sn and Cu-Sn-5%B nanoparticles have been synthesized by mechanical alloying. The measured quantity of synthesized nanoparticles has been dispersed in ethylene glycol using programmed ultrasonication. Different surfactants like sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and oleic acid have been used to prepare nanofluids.