Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Ternary Hybrid Nanoparticles as Thermal Additives in H2O

The performance of water as a heat transfer medium in numerous applications is limited by its effective thermal conductivity. In order to improve the thermal conductivity of water, herein we report the development and thermophysical characterization of a novel metal-metaloxide-carbon based ternary hybrid nanoparticles (THNp), GO-TiO2-Ag and the rGO-TiO2-Ag. The results indicate that the graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide based ternary hybrid nanoparticles dispersed in water enhance its thermal conductivity by 66% and 83%, respectively, even at very low concentrations. Mechanisms contributing to this significant enhancement are discussed. The experimental thermal conductivity is plotted against the existing empirical hybrid thermal conductivity correlations. We found that those correlations are not suitable for the metal-metaloxide-carbon combinations, calling for the developing a new thermal conductivity models. The rheological measurements of the nanofluids display non-Newtonian behavior, and the viscosity reduces with the increase in temperature. Such behavior is possibly due to the non-uniform shapes of the ternary hybrid nanoparticles.