Experimental investigation on the competition between enhancement of electrical and thermal conductivities in water-based nanofluids

In this paper, experimental investigations on the thermal and electrical conductivities of three kinds of water based nanofluids are conducted. The experimental data are collected for Ag, SiC, and Graphene oxide (GO) nanofluids with respect to temperature and nanoparticle concentration. Results show that both the temperature and nanoparticle concentration have positive effect on the thermal and electrical conductivities of nanofluids. The effect of temperature and volume fraction of nanoparticles on the thermal conductivity of nanofluids is almost the same; however, the effect of nanoparticle concentration is much higher than the temperature for electrical conductivity. Furthermore, to better survey the benefit of nanofluids as coolant in electrically active heat transfer environments, the thermo-electrical conductivity (TEC) ratio was established based on the achieved experimental data and checked explicitly.