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Updated: May 31, 2026

Characterization of Thermal Transport in One-dimensional Solid Materials
Published on: January 26, 2014
Thermal conductivity and viscosity of self-assembled alcohol/polyalphaolefin nanoemulsion fluids
Jiajun Xu1, Bao Yang, Boualem Hammouda
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. baoyang@umd.edu.
Abstract:
Very large thermal conductivity enhancement had been reported earlier in colloidal suspensions of solid nanoparticles (i.e., nanofluids) and more recently also in oil-in-water emulsions. In this study, nanoemulsions of alcohol and polyalphaolefin (PAO) are spontaneously generated by self-assembly, and their thermal conductivity and viscosity are investigated experimentally. Alcohol and PAO have similar thermal conductivity values, so that the abnormal effects, such as particle Brownian motion, on thermal transport could be deducted in these alcohol/PAO nanoemulsion fluids. Small angle neutron-scattering measurement shows that the alcohol droplets are spheres of 0.8-nm radius in these nanoemulsion fluids. Both thermal conductivity and dynamic viscosity of the fluids are found to increase with alcohol droplet loading, as expected from classical theories. However, the measured conductivity increase is very moderate, e.g., a 2.3% increase for 9 vol%, in these fluids. This suggests that no anomalous enhancement of thermal conductivity is observed in the alcohol/PAO nanoemulsion fluids tested in this study.
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