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Particuology 7 (2009) 141–150

Review of nanofluids for heat transfer applications

Dongsheng Wen a,∗ , Guiping Lin b , Saeid Vafaei a , Kai Zhang c
a School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London, E1 4NS, United Kingdom
b School of Aeronautics Engineering, Beijing University of Aeronautic and Astronautics, Beijing, China
c State Key Lab of Heavy Oil Processing, China University of Petroleum, Beijing 102249, China

Abstract
Research on nanofluids has progressed rapidly since its enhanced thermal conductivity was first reported about a decade ago, though much
controversy and inconsistency have been reported, and insufficient understanding of the formulation and mechanism of nanofluids further limits
their applications. This work presents a critical review of research on heat transfer applications of nanofluids with the aim of identifying the limiting
factors so as to push forward their further development.
© 2009 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All
rights reserved.

Keywords: Nanofluids; Nanoparticles; Process intensification; Thermal conductivities; Boiling; Convective heat transfer

1. Introduction passive techniques and active techniques. External energy input

Energy has been rated as the single most important issue
facing humanity in the next 50 years, in particular, the serious
terawatt challenge while mitigating carbon emission and global
warming (Smalley, 2005). Securing clean energy has become
the top priority of most developed countries. Fundamentally,
energy conversion and transportation occur at atomic or molecu-
lar levels, nanoscience and nanotechnology are expected to play
a significant role in revitalizing the traditional energy indus-
tries and stimulating the emerging renewable energy industries.
Among all the forms of energy we are using today, over 70%
are produced in or through the form of heat. In many industrial
systems, heat must be transferred either to input energy into a
system or to remove the energy produced in a system. Consider-
ing the rapid increase in energy demand worldwide, intensifying
heat transfer process and reducing energy loss due to ineffective
use have become an increasingly important task. Heat removal
and control are the demanding challenges in some high heat flux
systems such as nuclear fission, fusion, micro/nanoelectronics
mechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), process intensification
and micro chemical reactions.
Methods that have been proposed to intensify heat transfer
in different situations can be classified into two main groups:
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 20 78823232; fax: +44 20 89831007.
is needed for active techniques, viz. mechanical mixing, rota-
tion, vibration, and addition of external electrostatic or magnetic
field, which have been successfully used to intensify heat and
mass transfer, leading to efficient heat pumps, separators and
reactors and faster processing. However external energy input
is costly and inconvenient under compact situations. For pas-
sive techniques, heat transfer intensification can be achieved by
modifying fluids property, surface shape, roughness or attaching
objects to increase surface area and turbulence. However their
inherent limitation is the relatively low thermal conductivity of
heat transfer fluids. Water possesses the highest thermal conduc-
tivity among all the fluids we use today, though it amounts to
merely ∼0.6 W/m K under room temperatures, which is several
orders lower than most metals or metal oxides, as shown in Fig. 1.
It would perhaps be logical to add certain solid particles into a
base liquid to increase its thermal conductivity k, a concept that
has been practiced for a long time. Most of these early studies,
however, used suspensions of millimeter- or micrometer-sized
particles, which led to problems such as poor suspension sta-
bility and hence channel clogging, often serious for systems
consisting of small channels.
Nanofluids are dilute suspensions of functionalized nanopar-
ticles smaller than 100 nm, which belong to a new type of
functional composite materials developed about a decade ago
with the specific aim of increasing the thermal conductivity of
heat transfer fluids (Choi, 1995), which have now evolved into a

1674-2001/$ – see inside back cover © 2009 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.partic.2009.01.007
142 D. Wen et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 141–150
Fig. 1. Comparison of the thermal conductivity of common liquids, polymers
and solids.
promising nanotechnological area. Such thermal nanofluids for
heat transfer applications represent a class of its own different
from conventional colloids for other applications. Compared to
conventional solid-liquid suspensions for heat transfer intensi-
fications, properly engineered thermal nanofluids possess the
following advantages:
• High specific surface area and therefore more heat transfer
surface between particles and fluids.
• High dispersion stability with predominant Brownian motion
of particles.
• Reduced pumping power as compared to pure liquid to
achieve equivalent heat transfer intensification.
• Reduced particle clogging as compared to convention slurries,
thus promoting system miniaturization.
• Adjustable properties, including thermal conductivity and
surface wettability, by varying particle concentrations to suit
different applications.
Fig. 2 shows the rapid growth of nanofluids research in recent
years, including US, EU, and China, and more recently, India
and South Korea. The potential market for nanofluids for heat
transfer applications is estimated to be over 2 billion dollars per
year worldwide (CEA, 2007), with prospect of further growth in
the next 5–10 years. A critical review of state-of-the-art nanoflu-
ids work for heat transfer intensification is both necessary and
timely, for which this study will focus on three main aspects:
Fig. 2. Growth of publications by the nanofluids community.
nanofluids formulation, nanofluids applications and mechanistic
understanding, as will be detailed below.
2. Nanofluids formulation
Though various aspects of nanoparticles have been exten-
sively investigated over the past few decades; little attention
has been paid to the formulation of nanofluids, i.e. the mak-
ing of stable nanoparticle suspensions suitable for heat transfer
applications. The properties and behaviour of nanofluids much
depend on the properties of the base liquid and the dispersed
phases, particle concentration, size and morphology, as well as
the presence of dispersants or surfactants (called stabilizer in
general in following sections). Formulation of stable nanoparti-
cle suspensions has been widely practised in the colloid industry,
and even in ancient times, a number of ultrafine particles such
as carbon and gold were dispersed into liquid media for painting
and glass coating. However, the requirement of nanofluids for-
mulation is more demanding than conventional colloids due to
the harsh application environment, i.e. typically under high shear
and high temperature conditions. Formulating stable nanofluids,
with controlled properties such as thermal conductivity, viscos-
ity and wettability for heat transfer applications, still presents
a challenge for the nanofluid community. Two methods can
be generally used for such formulation, namely, the top-down
method through size reduction (the two-step method), and the
bottom-up approach through simultaneous production and dis-
persion of nanoparticles (the one-step method).
2.1. The two-step method
For the two-step method, dried nanoparticles have to be
either synthesized or purchased in the form of dry powders.
Nanoparticles synthesized through different routes have dif-
ferent morphologies, structures and hence different physical
and chemical properties, which will affect the quality of the
final nanofluids. Currently a wide range of vapor, liquid and
mechanical routes are available for synthesizing nanoparticles.
The mechanical route, such as milling and grinding, is straight-
forward but energy intensive. The liquid route such as the
sol–gel and wet chemical methods typically involves chemi-
cal reactions of a few reagents with one desired product while
normally producing other impurities that are difficult to control.
The vapor-phase route involves producing a reactive vapor in
which nucleation and growth occur through combustion, pyrol-
ysis, plasmas, laser ablation, laser pyrolysis, or chemical vapor
deposition. From both economic and quality considerations, the
gas phase route has become the most favorable method for large-
scale production of nanoparticles. Due to strong Van der Waals
attractive force, however, nearly all nanoparticles are in the form
of dried agglomerates with much larger dimensions than the
primary particles, as shown in Fig. 3 using alumina and nickel
particles as examples. The degree of agglomeration changes with
the nature of the manufacturing, handling and storage process.
As a consequence, careful selection of synthesis methods and
proper characterisation of as-received dried nanoparticles are
highly necessary for controlled formulation of stable nanofluids.
 D. Wen et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 141–150
Fig. 3. SEM Samples of dried nanomaterials ␣-Al2 O3 (a) and nickel (b).
Compared to the bottom-up approach, dispersing dry parti-
cles into liquids has been more frequently used by researchers
in the nanofluid field. It is essential to disperse large agglomer-
ates of nanoparticles to their primary particle size to formulate a
stable dispersion. The process, by which particles are dispersed
in the liquid, plays a critical role for adequate dispersion under
the thermal and hydraulic conditions imposed on it. The gen-
eral equipment used in dispersing dried nanoparticles includes
ultrasonic baths, magnetic stirrers, high-shear mixers, homoge-
Fig. 4. Samples of ␣-Al2 O3 nanofluids (without any stabilizer) stability change with time.
143
Fig. 5. Samples of ␣-Al2 O3 particle size profile in situ.
nizers and bead mills. The processing time and intensity could
significantly influence the dispersion effect. Weakly bonded
agglomerates could generally be broken to the primary sizes
by high shearing; though nanoparticles tend to re-agglomerate
due to the attractive London van der Waals force. So electro-
static repulsion or steric hindrance is required to overcome such
attractive force in order to form stable dispersions. Certain sta-
bilizers are generally used during the formulation of nanofluids
to establish steric barriers among nanoparticles, in order to sta-
bilize the nanofluids. Nanofluids formulated without stabilizers
could be used instantly but stability would change rapidly with
time, as shown in Fig. 4, where alumina nanoparticles become
completely separated after 5 h. In this example, the aqueous
nanofluids were made from commercial dried alumina powders
with primary particle size of 20-nm as shown in Fig. 3a, and
formulated by the two-step method at a concentration of 2.5%
by weight through a homogenizer without any stabilizers. The
duration of stability of these nanofluids depends on the parti-
cle surface properties, size and morphology. It has to be realized
that in the dispersed state, the actual particle size and its distribu-
tion are generally quite different from that of the dried particles.
For example, Fig. 5 illustrates the particle size distribution of
freshly made alumina nanofluids shown in Fig. 4, measured by
the dynamic light scattering (DLS) method through the Malvern
Nanosizer, to be approximately 130 nm, which is much larger
than the primary particle size ∼20 nm shown in Fig. 3a. This
might be caused by one of two reasons. One is the existence of
small, difficult-to-break agglomerates which were closely coa-
lesced or sintered together during manufacture. The other is that
the Malvern Nanosizer measures the hydrodynamic size accord-
144 D. Wen et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 141–150
Fig. 6. Two-step method for nanofluids formulation.
ing to the Stokes–Einstein equation, which is expected to be
larger than the actual size. Such a comparison calls for caution
when interpreting the particle size effect based only on the nom-
inal size distribution provided by the manufacturer or observed
by electron microscopy. To elucidate the effect of particle size
and agglomeration structure, it is essential to distinguish the
particle size difference in dried form and in dispersed state, for
which, as mentioned above, little is provided in most published
studies on nanofluids.
To overcome the stability problem, stabilizers are often
introduced during the formulation process, as illustrated
schematically in Fig. 6, that involves three steps: (a) preparing
pure liquid, (b) mixing suitable stabilizers to the pure liquid (base
liquid) and (c) dispersing nanoparticles into the base liquid. In
the nanofluid community, the heat transfer capability of nanoflu-
ids is generally compared with that of pure liquid, which is quite
misleading. The stabilizers, especially those loose ones as shown
in Fig. 6c could alone alter the values of surface tension, wet-
tability and viscosity. These factors, as will be discussed below,
will change significantly the flow and heat transfer behaviour
of nanofluids. As a consequence, the effects of nanoparticles
and of stabilizers are mixed together. The common approach in
nanofluid community of comparing this mixed effect with pure
liquid only could be one of the major reasons responsible for the
observed large data scattering. A proper comparison base has to
be built to differentiate the effect of stabilizer and nanoparticles.
There are some commercial nanoparticles with modified
surfaces, either as functional layers or stabilizers introduced
onto the particle surface during synthesis. If the bonding of sta-
bilizer and nanoparticles is strong enough, a proper dispersion
process may eliminate the loose stabilizers in the liquid phase
of Fig. 6c, so as to establish a proper comparison base between
functional particles and pure liquids. However this needs to
be carefully assessed to prove that there is no breakage of the
bonding. Another significant issue for these functionalized
particles is the temperature effect. For biological or colloidal
application, these nanoparticle dispersions are normally stable
at room temperature, though at elevated temperatures the
stabilizers may fail, thus affecting the stability, such as occurs
for some nano-dispersions from commercial suppliers, as was
verified by Wen and Ding (2004a) for carbon nanotube nanoflu-
ids using sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate (SDBS) as the
stabilizer.
2.2. The one-step method
The formulation of nanofluids by the bottom-up approach
through physical or chemical reactions has been gaining increas-
ing interests. Such a method has been practised for a long time
in the colloid industry, viz. colloidal gold, which has attracted
considerable attention from a fundamental and practical point of
view due to its attractive electronic, optical, thermal and catalytic
properties. The study of colloidal gold started since Michael
Faraday’s work in the mid nineteen century. Colloidal gold is
generally synthesized by the chemical reduction of gold salts
such as chloroauric acid (HAuCl4 ) in aqueous, organic phase or
two phases, and surface functionalized with various materials.
The established synthesis methods include citrate reduction, the
Brust-Schiffrin method (Brust, Walker, Bethell, Schriffrin, &
Whyman, 1994), and the modified Brust-Schiffrin method that
contains different sulfur-containing ligands. The size of gold
nanoparticles can be tuned by controlling the ratio of thiol or
other ligands to Au ions used in the synthesis. Gold nanofluids
have only been investigated by a limited number of studies due
to the high cost (Tsai et al., 2004). A number of other nanoflu-
ids were formulated such as copper and iron nanofluids through
a modified physical vapor deposition method and hydrother-
mal chemical reduction of salts (Eastman, Choi, Li, Yu, &
Thompson, 2001; Zhu, Lin, & Yin, 2004). Further formulation
of nanofluids should be referred to the experience developed in
the colloid community.
The stability of nanofluids can be improved through proper
surface functionalization without involving mechanical facili-
ties. The bottom-up approach however suffers the disadvantage
that residual reactants are left in the nanofluids due to incom-
plete reaction or stabilization. It is difficult to elucidate the
nanoparticle effect without eliminating this impurity effect. The
functionality of stabilizers under high temperature is also a big
concern, especially for high temperature applications.
It appears that the controlled formulation of stable nanofluids
still presents a challenge for heat transfer intensification appli-
cations. The lack of proper control of both solid phase and liquid
phase could be one of the most important reasons for the large
data scattering reported in the literature, and also presents as a
big barrier for industrial adoption of nanofluids. Close collabo-
ration between colloid and material scientists and heat transfer
engineers should be strengthened in the future.
 D. Wen et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 141–150
3. Nanofluids for heat transfer application
While the original idea of nanofluids was to enhance the ther-
mal conductivities of some typical heat transfer fluids including
water, mineral oil and ethylene glycol, the influence of nanopar-
ticles has been found even more profound than mere thermal
conductivity effect. While most current research is still focused
on thermal conductivity, neglecting the alteration of other prop-
erties by nanofluids especially viscosity and surface properties.
A large number of inconsistent experiments reported for nanoflu-
ids applications under flow conditions either with or without
phase change. This section will discuss the influence of nanopar-
ticles on effective properties, while using boiling heat transfer as
an example to reveal the contradictions among different research
groups and commenting on the effect of nanofluids on flow and
heat transfer applications.
3.1. Influence of nanofluids on effective properties
h=h(cp,, , )
The effectiveness of heat transfer is described by the heat
transfer coefficient (HTC), h, which is a function of a num-
ber of thermo-physical properties of the heat transfer fluids, the
most significant ones being thermal conductivity, k, heat capac-
ity, cp , viscosity, μ, density, ρ, and surface tension, σ, if phase
change is involved. The general trend is that the HTC increases
with effective thermal conductivity, specific heat and density, but
decreases with viscosity. For instance,
 for the
√ classical transient
conduction heat transfer, q ∼ kρcp T/ t, the HTC can be
expressed as h ∼ k0.5 ρ0.5 cp0.5 /t 0.5 ; and for convective heat trans-
fer of steady state homogenous flow, the HTC can be generally
expressed as h ∼ ka ρb cpc /μd σ e , where a, b, c, d, e are empirical
or theoretical constants that depend on different boundary and
geometrical conditions, and the constant e is normally zero for
convections without phase change. The addition of nanoparticles
into a base liquid could affect all these properties thus affecting
the effectiveness of heat transfer.
Besides the effective density that is easily measurable, the
quantitative influence of nanoparticles on all other four effective
properties has not yet been established. A large number of stud-
ies reported that nanofluids could possess much higher effective
thermal conductivities than the base fluids and the predictions
from the effective media theory. Typically a ∼10% increase in
the thermal conductivity for ∼1% particle load by volume can
be achieved (Yu, France, Routbort, & Choi, 2008), although
quantitative agreement is still lacking and the reason for such a
large data scattering as well as the underlying mechanism are
still unclear. Nanofluids may suffer two other inherent limita-
tions, the increased effective viscosity due to the addition of
nanoparticles and the decreased effective specific heat as most
of the solid materials added, such as metal and metal oxides, have
much lower specific heat than conventional heat transfer fluids
such as water. An increasing number of studies has shown that
the increase of effective viscosity is also beyond prediction from
conventional theories, especially for high particle concentrations
(Chen et al., 2008). Similar to the mechanisms related to effec-
tive thermal conductivity, the morphology and particle structure
could also affect viscosity, which could increase exponentially
145
after a certain concentration threshold (Tseng & Lin, 2003). In
the meantime, stabilizers, especially some surfactants strongly
tend to reduce the viscosity of the base liquid, the effect of which
is compounded with that of solid particles to further complicate
the situation. The decrease of effective specific heat of nanofluids
is understandable, and was indeed observed in recent experi-
ments for a sample Al2 O3 /H2 O (Zhou & Ni, 2008) nanofluid.
It clearly showed that the effective specific heat decreased with
increasing nanoparticle concentrations. Research into the influ-
ence of nanoparticles on surface tension, or more generally, the
wettability is still at an early stage. It is generally believed that
nanoparticles could increase the wettability of a base liquid and
might be responsible for the large increase in the critical heat
flux (CHF) as observed in experiments (Kim, Bang, Buongiorno,
& Hu, 2006, 2007a, 2007b; Vassallo, Kumar, & Damico, 2004;
You, Kim, & Kim, 2003). However further research is clearly
needed.
It is clear that the increase of thermal conductivity might be
offset by the increase of viscosity, the decrease of effective spe-
cific heat or the variation of wettability. An impartial assessment
of the application of nanofluids should be conducted without
focusing on the effective thermal conductivity only.
3.2. Influence of nanofluids on boiling heat transfer
On the application of nanofluids, convective heat transfer
of nanofluids with and without phase change has been exten-
sively investigated. However similar to the investigation on the
effective properties, these results are far from being conclusive.
While qualitative agreement has been reached on convective heat
transfer with nanofluids, many conflicting experimental results
have been reported for pool boiling heat transfer. For instance,
when compared with boiling of pure fluids, significant boiling
heat transfer enhancement has been reported for nanofluids (Liu,
Xiong, & Bao, 2007; Park & Jung, 2007a, 2007b; Wen & Ding,
2005; Wen, Ding, & Williams, 2006; Witharana, 2003), which
however contrasts significantly with others where heat transfer
deterioration was reported (Bang & Chang, 2005; Das, Putra,
& Roetzel, 2003a, 2003b; Kim et al., 2007a, 2007b; Chopkar,
Das, Manna, and Das, 2008). Fig. 7 summarizes the trends of
these observations in terms of the boiling heat transfer coeffi-
cient ratio, defined as the HTC of nanofluids over that of the
base fluids. The results are very inconsistent even for the same
nanoparticles under similar experimental conditions. Most of
the explanations on the observed experimental results have been
speculative, especially on the interaction of nanoparticles, bub-
ble nucleate cavities and heating surfaces.
Compared to the contradictory nucleate boiling results with
nanofluids, more qualitatively consistent observations have been
reported on the enhancement of the Critical Heat Flux (CHF)
by nanofluids (Bang & Chang, 2005; Kim et al., 2007a, 2007b;
Milanova & Kumar, 2005; Vassallo et al., 2004; You et al., 2003;
Kim, Kim, and Kim, 2006). However the quantitative results
still differ: the CHF enhancement has been reported to vary
from 10–40% (Bang & Chang, 2005) to 200–400% (Milanova
& Kumar, 2005; You et al., 2003) as summarized in Fig. 8.
146 D. Wen et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 141–150
Fig. 7. Summary of literature data on boiling heat transfer with nanofluids.
It is difficult to explain such wide differences. As reviewed
in the nanofluid formulation section, the most probable rea-
sons reside in the stability of nanofluids and the variability of
both the solid and the liquid phases. Most nanofluids used in
boiling experiments tend to be unstable at high temperatures
due to the failure of stabilizers. The stabilizers and particles
could agglomerate and deposit on the heating surface, which cer-
tainly modifies the heating surface and brings about a number of
unforeseen effects, including the change of active nucleate cav-
ities, the modification of surface wettability and the formation
of extra thermal resistance on the heating surface that prevents
direct contact of liquid with the boiling surface. Some of these
factors could explain the deterioration of boiling heat transfer
behavior observed by Das et al. (2003a, 2003b) and Bang and
Chang (2005), as is indeed reflected by the images of the boiling
surface after experiments (Bang & Chang, 2005), and directly
Fig. 8. Summary of literature data on CHF enhancement ratio.
observed by Das et al. (2003a). On the content of nanofluids, the
introduction of stabilizers, especially loose stabilizers in the liq-
uid phase, significantly influence both the rheological behaviour
of the fluids and the boiling heat transfer (Cheng, Mewes, &
Luke, 2007; Hetsroni, Gurevich, Mosyak, Rozenblit, & Segal,
2004; Wasekar & Manglik, 2000; Wen & Wang, 2002). How-
ever, most published studies on pool boiling of nanofluids did
not clearly specify if surfactants or dispersants were used. For
example, the nanofluids used by Vassallo et al. (2004) and Kim et
al. (2007a) were prepared by diluting a commercial concentrated
dispersion, which very likely contained surfactants/dispersants.
The variability of the solid phase, especially the particle surface
properties, either hydrophobic or hydrophilic, and their interac-
tion on the heating surface, will significantly change the boiling
behavior.
This example of boiling heat transfer with nanofluids illus-
trates the current weak understanding of nanofluids, and calls
for more systematic and strategic work.
4. Mechanisms
4.1. Conduction
The nanofluid community has intensively investigated the
thermal conductivity of nanofluids, proposing a number of
mechanisms for its enhancement including the interfacial layer-
ing, Brownian motion, ballistic transport of energy carriers, and
the structure effect (Eapen, Li, & Yip, 2007; Keblinski, Phillpot,
Choi, & Eastman, 2002; Nie, Marlow, & Hassan, 2008), though
there are yet debates on the effect of particle Brownian motion
(Keblinski et al., 2002; Li & Peterson, 2007), the interfacial
resistance (Tillman & Mill, 2007; Xie, Fujii, & Zhang, 2005;
Xu et al., 2006), and more recently the particle aggregation and
percolation effect (Evans et al., 2008; Lee, Kim, & Kim, 2006;
Prasher, Phelan, & Bhattacharya, 2006).
A comparison of the time constant between the particle Brow-
nian motion and thermal diffusion within the base liquid shows
that the direct movement of nanoparticles contributes negligibly
 D. Wen et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 141–150
Fig. 9. Aggregation effect on the effective thermal conductivity.
to thermal conduction. The effect of micro-convection associ-
ated with Brownian motion has recently been emphasized. These
models, however, generally employ the kinetic theory under a
number of idealized assumptions; and the prediction contradicts
the direct molecular dynamic simulation (Keblinski et al., 2002).
The enhanced mass transport visualized through the observation
of dye diffusion in nanofluids (Krishnamurthy, Bhattacharya,
Phelan, & Prasher, 2006), which is analogous to heat transfer in
nanofluids and has been taken as a strong evidence for the role of
micro convection by Brownian motion of particles, could be due
to the stabilizer effect as the surfactant introduced could signif-
icantly reduce viscosity. It is however yet unclear if the thermal
conductivity enhancement is caused by Brownian motion
particles or the reduced viscosity due to the surfactant. Both the
Brownian motion and micro-convection effect were criticized
recently from a fundamental heat transfer point of view (Nie
et al., 2008). Even more recently, the effect of aggregation has
been proposed by a number of researchers (Evans et al., 2008;
Prasher et al., 2006), who emphasized that the enhancement of
thermal conductivity is a function of nanoparticle aggregation,
as summarized schematically in Fig. 9. According to this
mechanism, there exists an optimized aggregation structure to
achieve maximum thermal conductivity, which is far beyond the
prediction from homogeneous dispersions. Such an argument
excludes thermal conductivity as an inherent physical property.
The loose aggregation structure may be destroyed under flow
and heating conditions. Its validation requires further careful
examination. The potential influence of particle aggregation
on conduction emphasizes that colloid chemistry will play
a significant role in optimizing the thermal conductivity of
nanofluids.
4.2. Convection without phase change
Both homogeneous and heterogeneous, or combined,
approaches have been employed in modeling convective heat
transfer using nanofluids. For most of the convective model-
ing work based on the homogeneous approach, an effective
thermal conductivity model taking into account the effect of
nanoparticles has always been assumed, as the main mecha-
nism for convection (Wen & Ding, 2004b; Koo & Kleinstreuer,
2005; Maïga, Nguyen, Galanis, & Roy, 2004; Roy, Nguyen, &
147
Comeau, 2006). As discussed earlier, considering the effective
thermal conductivity effect alone is not sufficient; and convective
heat transfer could only be modelled reasonably well if proper
models involving thermal conductivity, viscosity and specific
heat are selected. However no convincing models employing
these effective properties have yet been established, especially
involving thermal conductivity and viscosity as reviewed above.
Some experiments have actually suggested that the viscous
effect is not negligible, and the gain from thermal conduc-
tivity increase could even be offset by increased viscosity
(Buongiorno, 2006; Pak & Cho, 1999). There is a strong impli-
cation that particle size and shape could play an important role
in the level of heat transfer enhancement. Under similar con-
ditions, the enhancement of heat transfer coefficient is much
higher for carbon nanotubes (Ding, Alias, Wen, & Williams,
2006) than that for disc-shaped TiO2 nanofluids (Yang, Zhang,
Grulke, Anderson, & Wu, 2005). Besides the effective property
influence, a number of other mechanisms have been proposed by
considering the two-phase nature of nanofluids, which includes
the thermal dispersion effect (Xuan & Roetzel, 2000) and par-
ticle migration effect (Wen & Ding, 2005), but none of them is
conclusive (Wen, 2008a). Further study is urgently required.
4.3. Boiling heat transfer
The mechanisms of boiling heat transfer of pure fluids have
been developed during the past few decades, though little mech-
anistic analysis of boiling heat transfer with thermal nanofluids
has been conducted. Nanofluids may behave more as pure flu-
ids than conventional suspensions of micrometer or millimeter
particles, but they are two-phase in nature and should possess
some features of conventional suspensions. The interaction of
nanoparticles with heating surface and subsequent modification
of surface properties can change the boiling behavior; however
such an influence is difficult to predict as it involves the stabilizer
effect, the stability effect and the alteration of the boiling surface
before and after experiments. Most of the explanation on experi-
mental result summarized in Fig. 7 is based on speculation only.
Besides these conventional factors, latest development in col-
loids science suggested the importance of a structure disjoining
pressure.
As the boiling heat transfer is largely affected by flow and
heat transfer within the microlayers of bubbles at microm-
eter/nanometer thickness, the capillary force, intermolecular
interactions (disjoining pressure), and fluid and surface inter-
actions (wetting phenomena) become important. Consequently,
the understanding of thermal nanofluids on nucleate boil-
ing needs to consider the influence of nanoparticles on the
flow and heat transfer within the microlayer. Besides the
effects of evaporation, vapor recoil, capillary force and the
conventional disjoining pressure derived from the classical
Derjaguin–Landau–Verwey and Overbeek (DLVO) theory, a
long range structure disjoining pressure normal to the wall could
arise in the microlayer due to the presence of nanoparticles
(Trokhymchuk, Henderson, Nikolov & Wasan, 2001; Wasan
& Nikolov, 2003). Different from the conventional disjoining
pressure, which results from London-Van der Waals force of a
148 D. Wen et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 141–150
short-range nature, it has been demonstrated that a structural
disjoining force is generated from the ordering of nanoparti-
cles in a confined wedge (structuring) and the influence can
extend to a film depth of a few nanoparticle diameters (long
range) (Wasan & Nikolov, 2003; Sefiane, 2006. The origin of
the structural disjoining pressure is believed to be caused by
the confinement of the particles in the film region as opposed to
their greater freedom of location in the bulk liquid. When the film
thickness is large enough to accommodate more than one layer
of particles, the particles tend to arrange themselves in regular
layers. Such layering arrangement of particles gives rise to an
excess pressure in the film, the structural disjoining pressure. A
result of such a structure force is that nanofluids could exhibit a
super spreading capability in a confined space. Such forces have
been observed to be capable of changing the macroscopic con-
tact angle of a liquid droplet (Kim et al., 2007a, 2007b; Vafaei
et al., 2006), stabilizing liquid films (Sethumadhavan, Nikolov,
& Wasan, 2001) and lifting an oil droplet from a wall in an
aqueous solution (Chengara, Nikolov, & Wasan, 2001; Wasan
and Nikolov, 2003). Further inter-disciplinary studies covering
nanomaterials, colloidal science and engineering applications
are required to elucidate such an influence, especially regarding
concentration effect and transient effect (Wen, 2008b).
5. Outlook
A recent work reported a switchable thermal conductivity of
ferrofluids through an external magnetic field (Philip, Shima,
& Raj, 2008). An extraordinary enhancement of thermal con-
ductivity, ∼300%, is observed when linear chain-like structures
are generated and uniformly dispersed in the base fluid, while
negligible enhancement is obtained for well-dispersed particles.
The effective thermal conductivity of nanofluids can be adjusted
by proper control of the external magnetic field to generate dif-
ferent nanoparticle structures. Such a novel finding supports the
particle aggregation and structure theory for effective thermal
conductivity and opens a new window for engineering unique
nanofluid properties for different applications. However caution
is needed for practical heat transfer applications as the loose
structure could be easily broken under flow and heating con-
ditions. The influence of particle structure on other effective
properties, especially surface tension (wettability), viscosity and
specific heat, need to be assessed carefully. The gain from ther-
mal conductivity could be offset by the viscosity and specific
heat effects. Other areas of future research should pay more
attention to the linkage between rheology and thermal properties,
and nanoparticle interactions and particle-fluids-surface inter-
actions, which call for inter-disciplinary collaboration among
nanomaterial, colloid science and engineering researchers.
6. Conclusions
A critical review of the state-of-the-art nanofluids research
for heat transfer application was conducted in this work, which
showed that our current understanding on nanofluids is still quite
limited. There are a number of challenges facing the nanoflu-
ids community ranging from formulation, practical application
to mechanism understanding. Engineering suitable nanofluids
with controlled particle size and morphology for heat transfer
applications is still a big challenge. The current uncertainties on
the content of nanofluids, including both solid phase and liq-
uid phase, could be one of the main reasons responsible for the
controversy and inconsistency reported. Besides thermal con-
ductivity effect, future research should consider other properties,
especially viscosity and wettability, and examine systematically
their influence on flow and heat transfer. An in-depth under-
standing of the interactions between particles, stabilizers, the
suspending liquid and the heating surface will be important for
applications. Inter-disciplinary collaboration among nanomate-
rials, colloid science, physics and engineering researchers will
be necessary to engineer suitable nanofluids and accelerate their
applications.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to extend their thanks to EPSRC for
financial support (Grant No.: EP/E065449/1).
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