Experimental Investigation of Electrical Conductivity of Ethylene Glycol Containing Indium Oxide Nanoparticles

Abstract

Nanofluids as a quite new group of nanomaterials are very promising. A great potential of nanofluids was noted in second half of twentieth century and it was related with high increase of thermal conductivity. The most favourable effects of using nanofluids can be achieved in heat transfer systems, but also in other branch of industry like car, energy, and mining industry, even biomedicine industry. This paper presents results of experimental investigation of electrical conductivity of nanosuspension containing indium oxide nanoparticles dispersed in ethylene glycol. Five samples with volume fraction in the range 0.0016-0.0081 were prepared using two-step method. After preparation, all samples were impatiently investigated in controlled temperatures in the range from 298.15 K to 333.15 K. Measurement were conducted using conductivity meter MultiLine 3630 working with conductivity probe LR925/01 (WTW GmbH, Weilheim, Germany). Obtained results indicate that changes in volume concentration and temperature have strong impact on electrical conductivity of In2O3-EG nanofluids.

A Review on Electrical Conductivity of Nanoparticle-Enhanced Fluids

“…Anyhow, most of the researchers (see [19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35]) have explained the increase in electrical conductivity mainly by EDL formation; that is, the structure of charge accumulation and charge separation that always occurs at the interface when an electrode (in this case solid nanoparticles) is immersed into an electrolyte solution (i.e., the base fluid).…”

“…Studies on temperature variation influence over electrical conductivity are summarized in Table 3. The overall conclusion was that the temperature increase leads to a linear increase in the electrical conductivity [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57] which is a logical phenomenon with major occurrence in the physics of suspensions. Some details are already presented in both Table 1 and Section 3 and a discussion will be undertaken below.…”

“…Robust studies on electrical conductivity of EG based nanofluids were performed by the group from Zyla and Fall [25,27,28,29,30,31]. For example, Fal et al [25] investigated the indium oxide-EG nanofluids with MultiLine 363 equipment and found an increase in electrical conductivity of nanofluids both with concentration and temperature. The maximum growth in electrical conductivity of In 2 O 3 -EG nanofluids was detected for 0.0081% concentration at 333.15 K, namely 27,300%.…”

Surface Tension of Ethylene Glycol-Based Nanofluids Containing Three Types of Oxides: Zinc Oxide (ZnO), Magnesium Oxide (MgO) and Indium Oxide (In$$_2$$O$$_3$$)

“…The In 2 O 3 nanoparticles used are in the form of a dry, light yellow powder. The average size of the indium oxide nanoparticles as declared by the manufacturer is 4 nm and was confirmed using a JEOL JSM-6700F field emission scanning electron microscope (SEM) (JEOL, Tokyo, Japan), and the images taken on it can be found elsewhere [21].…”

“…In the literature, there are just a few papers on selected properties of indium oxide nanofluids in ethylene glycol (In 2 O 3 -EG). One of these is the work of Fal et al [21] in which they found an increase in the electrical conductivity of these nanofluids with both concentration and temperature. The maximum increase in electrical conductivity of In 2 O 3 -EG nanofluids, 27 300% was detected for a volume fraction of 0.0081 at 333.15 K. Żyła et al [22] presented the results of an experimental study of the dynamic viscosity of indium oxide nanofluids in ethylene glycol and found that these materials exhibit Newtonian character for each nanoparticle fraction tested.…”