Study of thermal conductivity enhancement of aqueous suspensions containing silver nanoparticles

Nanofluids are prepared by dispersing polyvinylpyrrolidone coated silver nanoparticles in distilled water. The thermal conductivity of nanofluids is measured by KD2 Pro thermal analyzer which is based on transient hot wire method. The influence of size and concentration of nanoparticles, surfactant and temperature of suspensions on the enhancement of the thermal conductivity is analyzed. The experimental results show that the thermal conductivity of nanofluids increases with the decrease in the size and increase in the concentration of the nanoparticles. Even with low volume fraction of 0.1 % and 20 nm size of silver nanoparticles, a high thermal conductivity enhancement of 54 % has been achieved. The surfactant and the temperature have a significant effect on the thermal conductivity enhancement of the nanofluids. The increase in temperature of the nanofluid from 30oC to 60oC increases its thermal conductivity up to 69 % whereas the addition of surfactant lessens the thermal conductivity enhancement to 34.2% with polyvinylpyrrolidone and 31.5 % with sodium dodecyl sulfate. The experimental results are compared with the existing theoretical models.