Radiative and combustion properties of nanoparticle-laden liquids

Key processes in energy conversion systems are radiative transport and combustion. The general objective of this dissertation is to improve energy conversion efficiency by a fundamental investigation of how nanoparticle-laden liquid suspensions, generally termed nanofluids, can be used to either enhance radiative absorption in solar thermal energy systems, or to improve the combustion properties of liquid fuels. The present study theoretically investigates the feasibility of using a non-concentrating direct absorption solar collector (DAC) and compares its performance with that of a typical flat-plate collector. Here a nanofluid - a mixture of water and aluminum nanoparticles - is used as the absorbing medium. It was observed that the presence of nanoparticles increases the absorption of incident radiation by more than 9 times over that of pure water. Under similar operating conditions, the efficiency of a DAC using nanofluid as the working fluid is found to be up to 10 percent higher (on an absolute basis) than that of a flat-plate collector.;Finally, the concept of using solar energy for converting biomass into useful product-gases was explored. A molten salt mixture (containing nanoparticles) was used to absorb and transfer solar energy to the biomass. Under the highest amount of solar radiation (60 times the normal solar radiation) about 1.1 tons of biomass could be converted to useful product-gases every hour, consuming about 900 kW of sunlight at an overall efficiency of 8 percent.;This study also attempts to improve the ignition properties of diesel fuel by investigating the influence of adding aluminum and aluminum-oxide nanoparticles to diesel. As part of this study, droplet ignition experiments were carried out atop a heated hot plate over the range of 688 to 768 degrees centigrade. Different types of fuel mixtures were used; both particle size (15 nm and 50 nm) as well as the volume fraction (0, 0.1 and 0.5 percent) of nanoparticles added to diesel were varied. It was observed that the ignition probability for the fuel mixtures which contained nanoparticles was significantly higher than that of pure diesel.