Experimental study on thermal properties of brines containing nanoparticles

This paper examines the thermal properties of brines containing nanoparticles using the transient hot-wire method. Two nanofluids are fabricated by the Submerged Arc Nanoparticle Synthesis System (SANSS) with water and ethylene glycol, respectively as base solvents at different volume fractions. Compared with those of aqueous solutions of ethylene glycol, both the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of the two brines containing nanoparticles were increased. The enhanced ratio of thermal diffusivity of the two nanofluids are several folds higher than that of thermal conductivity. Our study shows that better heat transfer performance can be obtained by adding nanoparticles to brines.