Thermal conductivity, viscosity and surface tension of nanofluids based on FeC nanoparticles

The main goal of the present study was to prepare and also to investigate the effects of both temperature and weight concentration on the thermo-physical properties of FeC/water nanofluids. The FeC nanoparticles were obtained by the laser pyrolysis technique. The TEM, XRD, EDX Raman and FT-IR spectroscopy techniques were used to characterize structure, purity and size of the nanopartides. Thermal conductivity, viscosity and surface tension of FeC/water nanofluids were investigated within the range of the temperature of 10 degrees C to 70 degrees C, for three weight concentrations (0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 wt%). The experimental results show that the thermal conductivity of FeC/water nanofluids increases with the increase of both weight concentration of the nanoparticles and temperature, in all cases studied. The data also indicate that the influence of weight concentration of the nanoparticles on viscosity becomes less significant for temperatures above 55 degrees C. The surface tension of FeC/water nanofluids increases with the increase of the weight concentrations of the nanoparticles. In the cases of low concentrations of nanoparticles (0.1% and 0.5%), the surface tension of nanofluids was lower than the surface tension of the water. For a concentration of the nanoparticles of 1.0%, the surface tension of the nanofluids within the range of 10 degrees C to 40 degrees C was close to the surface tension of the water. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.