Volumetric solar heating of nanofluids for direct vapor generation
Name
Volumetric with SI.pdf
Size
6.63 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Rahman, Md. Mahfuzur
Zhang, TieJun
Ni, George Wei
Miljkovic, Nenad
Ghasemi, Hadi
Huang, Xiaopeng
Boriskina, Svetlana V
Lin, Cheng-Te
Wang, Jianjian
Xu, Yanfei
Date Issued
September 2015
Journal
Nano Energy
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Ni, George et al. “Volumetric Solar Heating of Nanofluids for Direct Vapor Generation.” Nano Energy 17 (October 2015): 290–301 © 2015 Elsevier Ltd
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Traditional solar–thermal receivers suffer from high surface temperatures, which increase heat losses to the surroundings. To improve performance, volumetric receivers based on nanoparticles suspended in liquid (nanofluids) have been studied as an approach to reduce surface losses by localizing high temperatures to the interior of the receiver. Here, we report measured vapor generation efficiencies of 69% at solar concentrations of 10 sun using graphitized carbon black, carbon black, and graphene suspended in water, representing a significant improvement in both transient and steady-state performance over previously reported results. To elucidate the vapor generation mechanism and validate our experimental results, we develop numerical and analytical heat transfer models that suggest that nanofluid heating and vapor generation occur due to classical global heating of the suspension fluid. This work demonstrates high nanofluid-assisted vapor generation efficiencies with potential applications in power generation, distillation, and sterilization.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2015.08.021
