Thermal Conductivity, Viscosity and Density of R141b Refrigerant based Nanofluid

Abstract

Nanofluids attract researchers in many ways for its enhanced heat transfer properties. Nanorefrigerant is one kind of nanofluids. It has better heat transfer performance than traditional refrigerants. Recently, some experiments have been done about nanorefrigerant, which are mostly related to heat transfer performance of these fluids. Thermal conductivity, viscosity and density are the basic thermophysical properties that must be analyzed before performance analysis. In this paper, the volumetric effects of thermal conductivity, viscosity and density of Al2O3/R141b nanorefrigerant have been studied for different temperature ranges. Based on the analysis about nanorefrigerant it is found that, thermal conductivity increases with the increase of volume concentrations and temperatures. However, viscosity and density increases accordingly with the enhancement of volume concentrations and decreases with the increase of temperature. As, heat transfer performances increases with the augmentation of thermal conductivity and pressure drop and pumping power increases with the enhancement of viscosity and density. Therefore, an optimum volume concentration of nanorefrigerant could improve the performance of a refrigeration system.