Experimental investigation toward obtaining a new correlation for viscosity of WO3 and Al2O3 nanoparticles-loaded nanofluid within aqueous and non-aqueous basefluids

Abstract

In this study, the effect of temperature and mass fraction of Al2O3 and WO3 nanoparticles dispersed in deionized water and liquid paraffin was investigated on dynamic viscosity of nanofluid. The results of the TEM tests showed that the size of Al2O3 and WO3 nanoparticles was ranged from 10 to 60 nm, and the results showed that nanoparticles were semi-spherical. Also the results of DLS and zeta potential tests, respectively, exhibited the uniform size and high stability of the nanoparticles in the basefluid environment. The findings showed that adding a certain amount of nanoparticles to water and liquid paraffin increases dynamic viscosity, and in the case of various shear rates, the viscosity is constant for the water-based nanofluids, which indicates the Newtonian behavior of the nanofluid. In addition, for those prepared by liquid paraffin as a basefluid, the viscosity does not remain constant at different shear rates and at low amount of shear rate the viscosity achieves higher value, indicating non-Newtonian behavior of liquid paraffin-based nanofluids. The results showed that by increasing the temperature in liquid paraffin-based nanofluid the uniformity and linearity of the viscosity curve at various shear rates could be observed, which represents an approach for Newtonian behavior of nanofluid at higher temperatures. These results also showed that with increasing the mass fraction of nanoparticles in water and liquid paraffin, the viscosity increases at different shear rates. Finally, the correlation presented in this study shows that for nanofluid viscosity as a function of nanoparticles load and temperature, the deviation of correlated data from experimental values is less than 10%.