Thermophysical properties of a novel copper reinforced oil palm shell (OPS) composite: Effect of copper volume fraction and temperature

• Addition of copper increased thermal stability by more than 100 °C.
• Thermophysical properties are dependent on temperature & copper volume fraction.
• Thermal conductivity of OPS-copper composite is twice to that of OPS.
• Thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity reduced with increase in temperature.
• Specific heat capacity of composite lowered with increase in copper volume fraction.

Thermophysical properties of novel oil palm shell (OPS)-copper composite with different copper volume fractions at varying temperatures, ranging from 30 °C to 100 °C have been reported in this work. Thermophysical properties of composites have been determined by using ‘KD2 Pro’ instrument based on transient hot wire method. Thermo-gravimetric analysis of composites show that the thermal stability increases by more than 100 °C on increasing the copper volume fraction from 0.0 to 0.2 in the composite. Addition of copper in OPS has increased thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity while reduced the specific heat capacity of the composite significantly. At room temperature, thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity and specific heat capacity of the composite with copper volume fraction 0.2 is found to be 0.408 W/m-K, 0.221 mm2/s and 1.309 kJ/kg-K respectively as compared to 0.202 W/m-K, 0.142 mm2/s and 1.152 kJ/kg-K respectively for pure OPS (with no copper). Increase in the temperature resulted in the reduction in thermal conductivity & thermal diffusivity while specific heat capacity is found to increase with the rise in temperature for all the composites.