Specific heat of aluminum-oxide nanolubricants

This paper presents specific heat measurements for a synthetic polyolester (POE) based aluminum oxide (Al2O3) nanolubricant with a polymeric surfactant over a temperature range from approximately 4 °C to 45 °C. Al2O3 nanolubricants with two nominal surface-area-based diameter nanoparticles were investigated: 20 nm and 40 nm. The number-based diameter of the nanoparticles, as determined by dynamic light scattering (DLS), were 112 nm and 148 nm, respectively. The nanoparticle mass fractions were varied from 0.076 to 0.249 for the 112-nm diameter nanolubricant, and from 0.059 to 0.394 for the 148-nm diameter nanolubricant. The measurements showed that the specific heat of the nanolubricant linearly increased with increasing temperature, and linearly decreased with respect to increasing nanoparticle mass fraction. The size of the nanoparticle was shown to have no effect on the magnitude of the specific heat of the nanolubricant. The measurements were compared with two existing models. The mass fraction weighted model exhibited excellent agreement with the measurements (within ±1.01%). In contrast, the volume mass fraction model failed to predict the measurements for most conditions to within ±5%.