Abstract
Water, ethylene glycol and engine oil are commonly used in heat exchanger applications as coolant. However, these fluids possess low thermal conductivity. The advancement in nanotechnology has enabled nano-size particles to be included in a base fluid and this is known as nanofluids. The aim of this study is to investigate the most stable and homogeneous nanofluids with different weight percentage that produced excellent result in thermal properties and heat transfer characteristics. For this study, the usage of MWCNT as nanoparticles and deionized water as based fluids with surfactant were investigated for their stability and thermal properties. Different temperature and particle volume concentration were used in this study and this will affect the thermal conductivity, viscosity and specific heat as well as the heat transfer characteristics of nanofluids. As a result, the thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity of nanofluids were increased when the temperature and particle volume concentration increased. Besides that, the viscosity of nanofluids seem to decreased when temperature was increased but not for its particle concentration.