A comparative experimental study on thermal conductivity of distilled water-based mono nanofluids with zirconium oxide and silicon carbide for thermal industrial applications: Proposing a new correlation

Abstract

The main aim of this experiment was to determine the thermal conductivity of two nanofluids, ZrO2/DW and SiC/DW, under different temperatures and concentrations as compared to the base fluid. In this work, zirconium oxide and silicon carbide nanoparticles were obtained, and the nanofluids were prepared using a two-stage method by dispersing the nanoparticles in distilled water (DW) by the ultrasonic processor and a magnetic mixture. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), Energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometer (EDX), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques were used to microstructural and characterize the nanoparticles. Stability of nanofluids were examined by zeta potential test. After that, thermal conductivity was measured using the thermal hot wire method using a KD2-Pro thermal analyzer at temperatures ranging from 20 to 60 °C. Solid volume fractions (φ) of 0.025%, 0.05%, 0.075%, and 0.1% were used. The results showed that the thermal conductivity of the nanofluid was enhanced with increased volume fractions and temperature. The highest recorded thermal conductivity was at the highest temperature 60 °C and solid volume fraction 0.1%. The thermal conductivity enhancement for ZrO2/DW at the volume fraction of 0.1% was 20.455%, and that of SiC/DW was 30.303%. The enhancement was compared to that of the base fluid, distilled water. Finally, based on experimental data, A new mathematical correlations were obtained by curve-fitting. The correlations were used to estimate the thermal conductivity of ZrO2/DW and SiC/DW nanofluids at different solid volume fractions and temperatures. The results obtained were compared to a correlation to determine their accuracy. The deviations from the presented correlations were 1.49% and 1.2% for ZrO2/DW and SiC/DW, respectively. The comparison between experimental results and correlation outputs showed a good agreement which signifies that the results were accurate.