Authors: Sadegh Motahar Ali A Alemrajabi Rahmatollah Khodabandeh
Publish Date: 2015/09/24
Volume: 52, Issue: 8, Pages: 1621-1631
Abstract
In the present study carbonbased nanomaterials including multiwalled carbon nanotubes MWCNTs and vaporgrown carbon nanofibers CNFs were dispersed in noctadecane as a phase change material PCM at various mass fractions of 05 1 2 and 5 wt by the twostep method The transient plane source technique was used to measure thermal conductivity of samples at various temperatures in solid 5–25 °C and liquid 30–55 °C phases The experimental results showed that thermal conductivity of the composites increases with increasing the loading of the MWCNTs and CNFs A maximum thermal conductivity enhancement of 36 at 5 wt MWCNTs and 5 °C as well as 50 at 2 wt and 55 °C were experimentally obtained for noctadecane/MWCNTs samples Dispersing CNFs into noctadecane raised the thermal conductivity up to 18 at 5 wt and 10 °C and 21 at 5 wt and 55 °C However the average enhancement of 19 and 21 for solid and liquid phases of MWCNTs composite as well as 33 and 46 for solid and liquid phase of CNFs promised a better heat transfer characteristics of MWCNTs in noctadecane A comparison between results of the present work and available literature revealed a satisfactory enhancement of thermal conductivity For the investigated noctadecane/MWCNTs and noctadecane/CNFs composites a new correlation was proposed for predicting the thermal conductivity as a function of temperature and nanomaterials loading
Keywords: