Experimental investigation of thermo-physical properties of platelet mesoporous SBA-15 silica particles dispersed in ethylene glycol and water mixture

This paper presents an experimental investigation of thermophysical properties of platelet mesoporous SBA-15 particles dispersed in 60:40 (v/v) ethylene glycol:water mixture. The effect of weight fraction of particles and temperature is studied on density, viscosity and thermal conductivity of nanofluids. The maximum measured thermal conductivity enhancement reaches up to 22% for the nanofluids containing 5 wt% of SBA-15 at 60 °C. The SBA-15 nanofluids show Newtonian behavior in the tested temperature range. Also, the relative density increases between 0.4% and 2.2% when the weight percent of the nanoparticles varies between 1 and 5 at 60 °C. Structural and morphological characterization of synthesized SBA-15 have been carried out using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms methods.