Thermal parameters study of biodiesel containing au nanoparticles using photothermal techniques

Thermal parameters of biodiesel containing Au nanoparticles was characterized by thermal lens technique (TL) and inverse photopyroelectric (IPPE) technique. In the case of the TL spectrometry technique, two lasers in the mismatched mode experimental configuration were used in order to obtain the thermal-diffusivity (D) of the biodiesel. On the other hand, the sample thermal effusivity (e) was obtained by using the IPPE technique where the temperature variation of the sample, exposed to modulated radiation, is measured with a pyroelectric sensor. In this technique a He-Ne laser was used as the excitation source and was operated at 632 nm with an output power of 120 mW. From the obtained thermal-diffusivity (D) and thermal effusivity (e) values, the thermal conductivity (k) was calculated from the relationship (formula presented). The obtained thermal parameters were compared with the values of the thermal parameters of literature. Measurements of particle size and absorption were determined by complementary techniques such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and photoacoustic (PA) spectroscopy, respectively. Our work has applications as high functioning heat transfer fluids in automotive electronic cooling systems and in micro-channel heat sinks (Wen et al., 2006).