An explanation for anomalous thermal conductivity behaviour in nanofluids as measured using the hot-wire technique

Several efforts have been made to explain thermal conductivity enhancements in fluids due to the addition of nanoparticles. However, until now, there has been no general consensus on this issue. In this work a simple experiment is described that demonstrates a possible cause of misinterpretation of the experimental data of thermal conductivity obtained when using the hot-wire technique (HWT) in these systems. It has been demonstrated that the thermal conductivity of a two-layer sample of two non-miscible phase systems determined by means of the HWT must be modelled using a series thermal resistance model with consideration of the interfacial layers between different phases. This result sheds light on the thermal conductivity enhancement in nanofluids with respect to the values corresponding to the base fluid, suggesting that this increase can be explained using the above-mentioned model and not by application of empirical formulae for effective media, as done before.