Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Thermal Conductivity Enhancement of Copper-Water Nanofluid

A Master of Science thesis in Chemical Engineering by Nayef Hussein Abou-Tayoun entitled, "Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Thermal Conductivity Enhancement of Copper-Water Nanofluid," submitted in January 2012. Thesis advisor is Dr. Rachid Chebbi. Available are both soft and hard copies of the thesis.

Abstract

Nanofluid contains suspended nanoparticles, base fluid and some additives can be used for fluid stability like oleic acid and laurate salt. They are promising mediums to heat and cool high flux systems. Also, their use can extend to some other applications like photothermal therapy. That is why knowing the thermo-physical properties and especially the transport properties of the nanofluids are important to understand and implement their usage for many industrial applications and scientific studies. Molecular dynamics simulation (MD) is one of the tools that can be used to calculate these properties. In this work, the thermal conductivity of copper-water nanofluid was studied and calculated. The thermal conductivity of the nanofluid was found at different nanoparticles loading percentage ranging between 2.0-9.1% volume. The thermal conductivity of water was calculated and compared with the thermal conductivity value found in previous molecular dynamics works. The thermal conductivity of water found to be 0.77 ±0.01 W/m x k at 300 K and it was firstly calculated in order to obtain the enhancement ratio of the nanofluid at different volume percentages. The obtained data for thermal conductivity of copper-water nanofluid from the molecular dynamic simulation showed agreement with some experimental data. The highest obtained value of the thermal conductivity of nanofluid was up to 84% at 300 K for 9.1% copper nanoparticle loading in water. Finally, the role of interatomic interaction in enhancing the thermal conductivity was observed.