Study on the Thermal Conductivity of Carbon-Nanotube Nanofluids

탄소 나노튜브 나노유체의 열전도도에 대한 연구

An experimental study was conducted to investigate the effect of the morphology of CNT on the thermal conductivity of suspensions. The effective thermal conductivities of the samples were measured using asteady-state cut bar apparatus method. Enhancements based on the thermal conductivity of the base fluid are presented as functions of both the volume fraction and the temperature, Although functionalized SWNT produiced a more stable and homogeneous suspension, the addition of small amounts of surfactant to suspensions of 'as produced' SWNT demonstrated a greater increase in effective thermal conductivity than functionalized SWNT alone. The effective thermal conductivity enhancement corresponding to 1.0 percent by volume approached 10%, which was observed to be lower than expected, but more than twice the values, 3.5%, obtained for similar tests conducted using aluminum oxide suspensions. However, for suspensions of MWNT, the degree of enhancement was measured to be approximately 37%. It was postulated that the effect of clustering, resulting from the multiple heat-flow passages constituted by interconnecting neighboring CNT clusters, played an important role in significant enhancement of effective thermal conductivity.