Isobaric Specific Heat Capacity for Al2O3/Water Ethylene Glycol Mixture Nanofluid

Specific heat is a vital characteristic of nanofluids. The present work is an experimental assessment for the isobaric specific heat measurements for the Al2O3 nanoparticle dispersed in a base fluid of different mixture of ethylene glycol and water at 30, 40, 50, and 60 vol% based. The experiments were conducted over temperature range from 35 to 105 degrees C with nanoparticle concentrations of 0.5-2.5 vol%. The results indicated that the specific heat of nanofluid decreases as the nanoparticle volume increases and percentage of ethylene glycol in base fluid increases but increases as the temperature increases. This characteristic demonstrates that the use of nanofluids should be at as high temperature as possible to fulfill a good beneficial effect. A new correlation from the measurements with maximum deviation of 2.2% was found to estimate the specific heat for these nanofluids.