Heat Transferability in Nanofluids

The main focus of the present project will be to investigate the heat transfer mechanism in nanofluids and create accurate models to describe their behavior. An extensive experimental work combined with modeling efforts will be carried out to achieve a proper understanding of the reason why nanofluids conduct heat so effectively, the increased surface interaction between the fluid and the solid particles at the nanoscale should be investigated as a possible explanation to the increased heat transferabi lity. For a given volume of material, there is a greater number of particles as their size decreases; perhaps there is more opportunity for the nanoparticles to conduct the heat. The use of charged nanoparticles subjected to the effect of external electri cal field will also be investigated as a possible technique to enhance the heat transferability by reducing the boundary layer thickness. Furthermore, understanding of how the molecules of a base fluid keep nanoparticles suspended, since nanoparticles are still dramatically larger than individual molecules needs to be investigated. In this context, the effect of brownian forces on the kinematics of the nanoparticles should be investigated. Furthermore it would be of interest to investigate the magnitude o f the van der Wals forces between the particles and their effect on the nanofluids dynamics. These forces are usually small, but they become strong (and attractive) when the distance between particles becomes of the order of tenths of nanometers. The ul timate goal is to create nanofluids by design - in other words, to specifically formulate nanofluids to meet specific requirements; to tailor particle size, type, and fluid to an application. The current project has to be considered as a significant effor t towards this goal.