Structural and transport properties and solubility parameter of graphene/glycerol nanofluids: A molecular dynamics simulation study

- Structural and transport properties of graphene/glycerol nanofluid calculated
- Solubility parameter of graphene increases by increasing the number of layers.
- The viscosity of graphene/glycerol nanofluid was calculated by MD simulation.

We performed molecular dynamics simulations to calculate the viscosity of graphene/glycerol nanofluids. For this purpose, at first we checked the stability of dispersions of pure graphene nanosheets in glycerol by calculating the solubility parameter of pure graphene and pure glycerol. The results showed the solubility parameter of pure graphene with five layers is 37.37 MPa1/2 which is close to that of pure glycerol (38.62 MPa1/2). Hence, graphene can form a stable dispersion in glycerol. The influence of number of layers of pure graphene on its structural properties was also investigated. The transport properties of graphene/glycerol nanofluids including diffusion coefficient and viscosity were calculated. The diffusion coefficient of graphene/glycerol nanofluids decreases with increasing number of layers of graphene. The calculated viscosity at 293.15 K is close to our experimental value. To the best of our knowledge, this work reports for the first time the solubility parameter of pure graphene and viscosity of graphene/glycerol nanofluids by MD simulation.