Experimental determination of thermal conductivity of fluid containing oxide nanoparticles

The main aim of the present investigation is to determine the thermal conductivity of alumina/water and copper/water nanofluids. The effect of particle volume concentration, temperature and particle size was investigated. Readings at ambient temperature as well as over a large temperature range were made for various concentrations up to 0.8%. The experimental results show that these nanofluids containing a small amount of nanoparticles, have substantially higher thermal conductivity than the same liquids without nanoparticles. The obtained results from the experiment are in good agreement with a wide range of different models published in literature.