This article reports on the International Nanofluid Property Benchmark Exercise, or INPBE, in which the thermal conductivity of identical samples of colloidally stable dispersions of nanoparticles or "nanofluids," was measured by over 30 organizations worldwide, using a variety of experimental approaches, including the transient hot wire method, steady-state methods, and optical methods. The nanofluids tested in the exercise were comprised of aqueous and nonaqueous basefluids, metal and metal oxide particles, near-spherical and elongated particles, at low and high particle concentrations. The data analysis reveals that the data from most organizations lie within a relatively narrow band ͑Ϯ10% or less͒ about the sample average with only few outliers. The thermal conductivity of the nanofluids was found to increase with particle concentration and aspect ratio, as expected from classical theory. There are ͑small͒ systematic differences in the absolute values of the nanofluid thermal conductivity among the various experimental approaches; however, such differences tend to disappear when the data are normalized to the measured thermal conductivity of the basefluid. The effective medium theory developed for dispersed particles by Maxwell in 1881 and recently generalized by Nan et al. ͓J. Appl. Phys. 81, 6692 ͑1997͔͒, was found to be in good agreement with the experimental data, suggesting that no anomalous enhancement of thermal conductivity was achieved in the nanofluids tested in this exercise.

Experiment Heat transfer Binary mixture Polyolester R134a Additive Particle Copper oxide a b s t r a c t This paper quantifies the influence of CuO nanoparticles on the boiling performance of R134a/polyolester mixtures on a roughened, horizontal, flat surface. A lubricant based nanofluid (nanolubricant) was made with a synthetic ester and CuO particles. For the 0.5%nanolubricant mass fraction, the nanoparticles caused a heat transfer enhancement relative to the heat transfer of pure R134a/polyolester (99.5/0.5) of between 50% and 275%. A smaller enhancement was observed for the R134a/nanolubricant (99/1) mixture, which had a heat flux that was on average 19% larger than that of the R134a/polyolester (99/1) mixture.Further increase in the nanolubricant mass fraction to 2% resulted in a still smaller boiling heat transfer improvement of approximately 12% on average. Thermal conductivity measurements and a refrigerant/lubricant mixture pool-boiling model were used to suggest that increased thermal conductivity is responsible for only a small portion of the heat transfer enhancement due to nanoparticles.

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This paper presents liquid kinematic viscosity, density, and thermal conductivity measurements of eleven different synthetic polyolester-based nanoparticle nanolubricants (dispersions) at atmospheric pressure over the temperature range 288 K to 318 K. Aluminum oxide (Al2O3) and zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles with nominal diameters of 127 nm and 135 nm, respectively, were investigated. A good dispersion of the spherical and non-spherical nanoparticles in the lubricant was maintained with a surfactant. Viscosity, density, and thermal conductivity measurements were made for the neat lubricant along with eleven nanolubricants with differing nanoparticle and surfactant mass fractions. Existing models were used to predict kinematic viscosity (±20%), thermal conductivity (±1%), and specific volume (±6%) of the nanolubricant as a function of temperature, nanoparticle mass fraction, surfactant mass fraction, and nanoparticle diameter. The liquid viscosity, density and thermal conductivity were shown to increase with respect to increasing nanoparticle mass fraction.