Experimental investigation of stability and thermal properties of nanocellulose-water nanofluid

Abstract

Nanocellulose defines as cellulosic materials in the nanometer range with at least one dimension. Nanocellulose is classified into three classes which are bacterial nanocellulose (BNC), cellulose nanofibrils (CNF), and cellulose nanocrystalline (CNC). Nanofluids had been widely been used in heat transfer applications because nanofluids are proven to have better thermal conductivity and enhance heat transfer performance compared with base fluid. However, liquid with suspended particles tends to destabilize, and sediments. Therefore, this study will uncover the effect of surfactant on the nanocellulose and its thermophysical properties. CNC with 0.1vol%, 0.5vol%, 0.9vol%, and 1.3vol% and Triton X-100 were used in this experiment. From the sedimentation observation after two weeks, there were no obvious agglomeration and sedimentation of CNC in the samples with surfactant compare with no surfactant. Furthermore, UV–vis spectroscopy analysis showed that samples with Triton X-100 have lower absorbance drop compare with no surfactant. This was due to the steric stabilization achieve for samples using Triton X-100. For thermal conductivity analysis, The highest reading of thermal conductivity was 1.224W/m.K for 0.5vol% at 40°C. Furthermore, the effective thermal conductivity achieves for 0.5vol% at 40°C was 1.301 compared with distilled water.