The effects of graphene oxide nanosheets and ultrasonic oscillation on the supercooling and nucleation behavior of nanofluids PCMs

Abstract

Nanofluids phase change materials (PCMs) have attracted extensive attention in cold storage applications recently. This paper presents a latest experimental research about the effects of graphene oxide nanosheets and ultrasonic oscillation on the nucleation behavior and supercooling degree of nanofluids PCMs. The results demonstrate that the supercooling degree of nanofluids is suppressed considerably, and the maximum reduction of supercooling degree was 69.1 %; the nucleation started by 90.7 % time in advance, which indicates that nucleation is easier to achieve in nanofluids because of the heterogeneous nucleation aroused by graphene oxide nanosheets. On the other hand, it is observed that ultrasound oscillation also makes a great contribution to reducing the nucleation time and supercooling degree, and the supercooling degree is almost zero in graphene oxide nanofluids under ultrasound radiation. It is believed that graphene oxide nanofluids will be the excellent candidates for the cold storage materials because of their lower supercooling degrees and shorter nucleation time.