Thermo-physical properties of water and ethylene glycol mixture based SiC nanofluids: An experimental investigation

The mixture of water and ethylene glycol (EG) is a kind of traditional heat transfer fluids commonly used in many energy systems to retain the good heating (or cooling) ability of water, as well as broadening the operating temperature range for energy applications. Therefore, the enhancement of water/EG mixture thermo-physical properties by using nanoparticles would be beneficial for the performance of the energy systems. With the purpose of filling the research gap in the literatures, this paper presents experimental data of thermal conductivity and viscosity properties of water/EG-based SiC nanofluids. It was found that the thermal conductivity of nanofluids increased with the volume fraction, and the highest thermal conductivity enhancement was found to be 33.84% for 1.0 vol% nanofluid at 20 °C. The prepared SiC nanofluids behaved Newtonian behavior and the viscosities decreased with the increasing temperature. In addition, the heat transfer benefits suggested that the water/EG-based SiC nanofluids had potential applications for energy systems, which indicated promising capability of this kind of nanofluids for further heat transfer characteristics investigation.