Measurement of thermal conductivity of ZnO–TiO2/EG hybrid nanofluid

Abstract

The hybrid nanofluids are novel nanofluids and can be prepared by suspending various kinds of nanoparticles in base fluid. In this paper, an experimental investigation on the effects of temperature and nanoparticles concentration on the thermal conductivity of ZnO–TiO2/EG hybrid nanofluids is presented. The experiments were implemented at temperature ranging from 25 to 50 °C and solid volume fraction range of 0–3.5 %. Experiments indicate that the thermal conductivity enhances with increasing the solid volume fraction and temperature. It was found that the variation of thermal conductivity enhancement of nanofluids with solid volume fraction at higher temperatures is greater than that at lower temperature. Moreover, it can be also seen that the variation of thermal conductivity enhancement of nanofluids with temperature at higher solid volume fraction is more than that at lower solid volume fraction. Finally, based on experimental data, in order to predict the thermal conductivity ratio of ZnO–TiO2/EG hybrid nanofluids, a correlation was proposed. Deviation analysis of the thermal conductivity ratio was also performed. Comparison between experimental data and the proposed correlation outputs revealed that this correlation has a good accuracy.