An experimental study on the pressure drop of nanofluids containing carbon nanotubes in a horizontal tube

This article reports an experimental study on the flow characteristics of the aqueous suspensions of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Stable nanotube suspensions were made for pressure drop measurements by two different methods. One of them is to disperse nanotubes using a surfactant, and the other is to introduce oxygen-containing functional groups on the CNT surfaces by acid treatment. The pressure drops in a horizontal tube and viscosities of nanofluids were measured and the effects of CNT loading and different preparation methods were investigated. Viscosity measurements show that both CNT nanofluids prepared by two methods are shear thinning fluids and at the same volume fraction, the nanofluids prepared by the acid treatment have much smaller viscosity than the ones made with surfactant. Under laminar flow conditions, the friction factor of CNT nanofluids stabilized by adding surfactant is much larger than that of CNT nanofluids prepared by acid treatment, and both nanofluids show larger friction factors than distilled water. In contrast to this, under turbulent flow conditions, the friction factors of both nanofluids become similar to that of the base fluids as the flow rate increases. It is also shown that as CNT loading is increased, laminar regime of nanofluids has been extended to further higher flow rates, therefore, nanofluids could have low friction factors than pure water flows at certain range of flow rates.