Thermal characteristic of nanofluids containing titanium dioxide nanoparticles in ethylene glycol

Abstract

Rapid development of technology requires high-performance of cooling devices especially in heat transfer industries. In these recent years, there has been a lot of researchers show some interest in nanofluids because nanofluids is believed to be a very good coolant that exhibit some attractive characteristics as a coolant due to its high thermal properties. This research was conducted to formulate stable nanofluids containing titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles in ethylene glycol (EG) base fluid with the aid of gum Arabic (GA) as the surfactant. The thermal conductivity of nanofluids were measured. Two-step method was employed for nanofluids preparation. The results showed that in the presence of surfactant, the stability of nanofluids samples was increased because of modification of TiO2 nanoparticles surface area. The nanoparticles tend to repulse each other and decrease the agglomeration in the nanofluids. The thermal conductivity was enhanced by increasing the concentration of nanoparticles and temperature due to effect of Brownian motion. The research showed that TiO2 in EG nanofluids has the potential to be employed as a heat transfer fluids compared to the conventional fluids.