Empirical correlation finding the role of temperature and particle size for

nanofluid (Al2O3) thermal conductivity enhancement

Chan Hee Chon, Kenneth D. Kihm, Shin Pyo Lee, and Stephen U. Choi

Citation: Appl. Phys. Lett. 87, 153107 (2005); doi: 10.1063/1.2093936

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2093936
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 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 87, 153107 2005

Empirical correlation finding the role of temperature and particle size

for nanofluid Al2O3 thermal conductivity enhancement
Chan Hee Chon and Kenneth D. Kihma
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville,
Tennessee 37996
Shin Pyo Lee
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kyonggi University, Suwon, 443-760, Korea
Stephen U. S. Choi
Energy Technology Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439
Received 1 April 2005; accepted 21 August 2005; published online 5 October 2005
In this letter, we report an experimental correlation Eqs. 1a and 1b or 1c for the thermal
conductivity of Al2O3 nanofluids as a function of nanoparticle size ranging from 11 nm to 150 nm
nominal diameters over a wide range of temperature from 21 to 71 C. Following the previously
proposed conjecture from the theoretical point-of-view Jang and Choi, 2004, it is experimentally
validated that the Brownian motion of nanoparticles constitutes a key mechanism of the thermal
conductivity enhancement with increasing temperature and decreasing nanoparticle sizes. 2005
American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2093936

The early inspiration of utilizing the enhanced thermal structured and Amorphous Materials Inc., 2 47-nm nomi-
conductivity of base fluid by adding highly conductive par- nal diameter sample Nanophase Inc., and 3 150-nm nomi-
ticles goes back to more than a century ago when first theo- nal diameter Nanostructured and Amorphous Materials Inc.
retically proposed by Maxwell.1 However, the inherent prob- Note that the volume weighted average diameters obtained
lems occurring from the relatively large size of colloidal from the TEM images are 12.92 nm, 49.47 nm, and
particles, such as their sedimentation, clogging, and abrasion, 182.40 nm, respectively. All nanofluid samples were pre-
have been a major obstacle to realize the concept in practice. pared with sufficient duration of sonication so that the nano-
In order to alleviate the pertinent problems, Choi2 pioneered particles are well suspended with minimum coagulation.
in 1995 to use nanofluids based on advanced manufacturing Placing the test apparatus inside a circulating thermal bath
techniques for nano-sized metallic particles with high ther- provides the tested temperature range from 21 to 71 C with
mal conductivities. Since Lee et al.3 made the first measure- 0.01 C accuracy at each specified temperature.
ment for thermal conductivity of nanofluids, various nanof-
luids have been studied to examine the nanofluid thermal
conductivity.47
Particularly over the last two years, a number of theoret-
ical studies812 have been published to predict the thermal
conductivity enhancement of nanofluids, however, they show
excessively large discrepancies between each other and far
from being established as a formidable model that can com-
prehensively describe the physics of nanofluid conductivity.
Experimental investigations are equally scarce in view of
systematic data availability except that the temperature de-
pendence of nanofluid thermal conductivity has been pre-
sented either for limited temperature range13 or for extremely
low concentration ranges.14 In this letter, a systematic experi-
mental result is presented to delineate the individual effects
of the nanoparticle size and nanofluid temperature, for the
case of Al2O3 nanofluids. The experimental findings are
summarized in terms of an empirical correlation function and
its physical interpretation focusing on the aforementioned
effects. In summary, the Brownian mobility of nanoparticles
in the base fluid is proved as the most important factor to
determine the nanofluid thermal conductivity.
Three nanofluid samples Fig. 1 are prepared by soni-
cating monodisperse batches of Al2O3 nanoparticles into
deionized water: 1 11-nm nominal diameter sample Nano-
FIG. 1. TEM photographs 50 000 and volume-weighted particle size
distributions of Al2O3 nanoparticles based on the equivalent diameter con-
a
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; electronic mail: version: a 12.92-nm volume-weighted average diameter, b 49.47-nm,
kkihm@utk.edu and c 182.40-nm.

0003-6951/2005/8715/153107/3/$22.50 87, 153107-1 2005 American Institute of Physics

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153107-2 Chon et al. Appl. Phys. Lett. 87, 153107 2005

FIG. 2. Comparison of the empirical correlation with experimental data for FIG. 3. Temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity enhancement
Al2O3 nanofluid thermal conductivity. of three different Al2O3 nanofluids with 11-nm, 47-nm, and 150-nm sized
nanoparticles at 1 and 4 vol % concentration, normalized by the thermal
conductivity of the base fluid at the specific temperature. Symbols represent
A miniaturized conductivity measurement device is de- experimental data and the corresponding curves represent empirical correla-
signed based on the transient hot-wire method15 and the tion, Eqs. 1a and 1b or 1c.
present device, requiring less than the 10 ml sample volume,
is constructed by modifying the previous example of a larger velocity of nanoparticles based on the Einstein diffusion
size.16 The stability of the power supply for the hot-wire theory19
reading uncertainty is specified to be 0.05% by the manufac-
turer, and the uncertainty of the temporal variation of the k bT kb T
VBr = , 4
wire temperature reading is estimated to be 1.20% based on 3d plBF 3d plBF A 10B/TC
the perturbation analysis of the voltage-temperature conver-
sion equation, which is the basis of the operating principle of where kb is the Boltzmann constant, 1.3807 1023 J / K, and
the pertinent technique. The measured thermal conductivity a constant value of 0.17 nm for the mean free path lBF is
of the base fluid water shows maximum deviation of 3.36% used for water for the entire tested temperature range. The
from the standard listed values for the tested temperature mean free path of a molecule is derived as lBF =
range 21 71 C. Using these elementary uncertainties, the 1 / 2n dBF
2
, where n represents the molecular number den-
overall measurement uncertainty for nanofluid thermal con- sity and denotes the collision cross section. The calculated
ductivity is estimated to 3.90% using the Kline-McClintock value of 0.17 nm from the equation for gas is believed to be
uncertainty analysis.17 in a reasonable range to use.20
Based on the Buckingham-Pi theorem with a linear re- Under specified f and dBF, assuming constant k p and
gression for the experimental results Fig. 2, an empirical constant BF for the tested temperature range, the correlation
correlation for the nanofluid effective thermal conductivity, Eq. 1a can be rewritten exclusively in terms of nanoparticle
keff, normalized by the base fluid thermal conductivity, kBF, is diameter and suspension temperature as
given with 95% confidence level as
keff
= 1 + 64.7 f 0.7460
dBF
0.3690
kp 0.7476
keff
kBF
= 1 + const 0.369
PrT0.9955T1.2321
d p kBFT0.74762T
, 1b

kBF dp kBF where const represents all specified or invariant experimental

Pr0.9955 Re1.2321 , 1a parameters.
Figure 3 shows the measured Al2O3 nanofluid thermal
where f denotes the volume concentration of nanoparticles of conductivity normalized by the base fluid conductivity at
diameter d p with thermal conductivity of k p, suspended in the each specified temperature symbols and the experimental
base fluid of molecular diameter of dBF with thermal conduc- correlation of Eq. 1b curves for different nanoparticle
tivity of kBF. The Prandtl number Pr, and the Reynolds sizes and volume concentrations. It is clearly evidenced that
number Re are respectively defined as the nanofluid conductivity increases with increasing nano-
BFVBrd p BFkbT fluid temperature and with decreasing nanoparticle sizes. The
Pr , Re = , 2 gradually accelerating temperature dependence with increas-
BF 32lBF
ing temperature is manifested as the slightly nonlinear func-
where BF is the base fluid density, and the temperature de- tion of Eq. 1b for temperature.
pendence of the base fluid viscosity is expressed as Figure 4 shows the temperature dependence of the three
primary parameters in Eq. 1, namely kBF, Pr, and Re with
= A 10B/TC , 3
the subscript o being at the reference temperature of 21 C,
where A, B, and C are constants, given as 2.414 105, for the case of 47-nm nanoparticles at 1 vol %. The Rey-
247.8, and 140, for the case of water.18 VBr is the Brownian nolds number that represents the mobility of nanoparticles
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153107-3 Chon et al.
FIG. 4. Comparison of temperature dependencies of the three primary pa-
rameters kBF, Pr, and Re of the empirical correlation for the case of the
Al2O3 nanofluid sample with 47 nm nanoparticles at 1 vol % concentration.
shows dominating temperature dependence, whereas Pr
shows slightly decreasing dependency and kBF shows practi-
cally no dependence on temperature. Note that the nanopar-
ticle Brownian velocity Eq. 4 directly represents the
nanoparticle mobility, or equivalently Re, as seen in Eq. 2.
Therefore, the Brownian velocity is considered as the
key mechanism describing the temperature dependence of
the nanofluid thermal conductivity by far dominating over
other parameters such as kBF or Pr. The temperature depen-
dence of Brownian velocity is exclusively shown for the
three tested particles in Fig. 5. As expected the Brownian
velocity is an increasing function with temperature and dra-
matically decreases with increasing nanoparticle sizes. By
approximating the weak temperature dependence of kBF and
Pr as invariant in Eq. 1b, the empirical correlation can ex-
plicitly show the effects of nanoparticle size and nanofluid
temperature as
0.369
keff 1 T1.2321
= 1 + const . 1c
kBF dp 102.4642B/TC
FIG. 5. Correlation between the Brownian velocities and nanofluid tempera-
ture for different nanoparticle sizes for Al2O3 nanofluids at 1 vol %.
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 87, 153107 2005
In conclusion, the systematic experiments for thermal
conductivity measurements using three different batches of
fairly monodipersed Al2O3 samples Fig. 1, together with
the analytical approaches using Buckingham-Pi theorem
with a linear regression scheme, provides an empirical cor-
relation equation Eqs. 1a and 1b or 1c to comprehen-
sively describe the effect of individual physical parameters
on nanofluid thermal conductivity Figs. 2 and 3. The most
important finding of this letter is the effect of the nanopar-
ticle mobility, known as the Brownian velocity that is single
most dominant function of temperature for a given particle
size Figs. 4 and 5. This Brownian velocity was theoreti-
cally conjectured as a key role in determining the tempera-
ture effect on nanofluid thermal conductivity enhancement in
a previous study.11 The present study validates the conjecture
by experimentally showing that the mobility of nanopar-
ticles, which includes temperature dependency, is the most
dominating factor for the thermal conductivity enhancement
of nanofluids than any other factors. Therefore, it can be
stated that at higher temperature, the nanofluid thermal con-
ductivity increases primarily as a result of increasing nano-
particle Brownian motion.
The authors wish to acknowledge Dr. Timothy J.
Fitzsimmons of the U. S. Department of EnergyBasic En-
ergy Sciences for his technical supervising of the contract
DE-FG02-05ER46182 to the University of Tennessee and
W-31-109-Eng-38 to Argonne National Laboratory.
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