Experimental investigation on viscosity of nanofluids prepared from banana fibre - nanoparticles

Abstract

In this research for the first time, banana-fibre nanoparticles produced for nanofluid application and the viscosity of resultant nanofluids were measured.A Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) were used to analyzethe sizes of the particles produced(200nm). This paper presents new findings on the synthesis of natural fibre to obtain nanoparticles and subsequently produced nanofluids. Nanofluids are prepared by dispersing Banana fibre- nanoparticles in deionized water.An ultrasonic sonicator was used to ensure proper mixtures of different volume fractions (0.3%, 0.6 %, 0.9 % 1.2 % and 1.5%) of Banana fibre nanoparticles into base fluid (DI water). A Vibro Viscometer machine (SV-10) is used to measure the viscosity of the prepared nanofluids more conveniently. For minimum and maximum volume fractions of Banana fibre-nanoparticles (0.3% and 1.5%) in deionized water,the viscosity was found to be 1.08 mPa.s and 1.23mPa.s, which increases slightly with an increase of particle volume fraction and decreases as the temperature increases.The experimental results show a maximum of 22% increasing of viscosity for 1.5% volume fraction of nanofluids as compared with the deionized water (base fluid). From the experimental study on prepared nanofluids conducted, results show that all the values of viscosities at different volume fractions of the prepared nanofluids were found to be substantially higher than the values of the base fluids (deionized water). The experiments were conducted at varying temperature range (20oC through 60oC).