Back when I was working on my engineering thesis, a friend of mine was telling me all about his research topic on Nanofluids. Not really familiar what Nanofluids were at the time, it picked my curiosity and I started reading a little more on the subject.
Without going in too much technical detail, Nanofluids consist of tiny little metal particles being added to conventional liquids. The idea behind this process is for cooling purposes. Water alone will have somewhat efficient cooling characteristics, but metal has to ability to absorb a lot more heat than water alone. With the two combined, greater cooling capabilities can be achieved; some of the system available act on the same principle as a radiator and have found great use in HVAC systems.
The challenge researchers are currently being faced with is the stability of the molecular structure. Because of the very different chemical characteristics of the two, it makes it difficult for the bond to hold for any extended period of time.
Some of the areas where Nanofluids might be of great interests would be in the cooling of engines, industrial equipment gearboxes or transmissions and maybe even computers. Some of the restrictions imposed on semiconductor engineers are the ability to cool down computer processors’ in the high Gigahertz operating range. Nanofluids would be utilized to cool down the processor thereby allowing much faster processing speed. Although still at the experimental stage for computer, Nanofluids have been successfully implement in the industrial world. The technology is still quite expensive, but with time commercial applications should be more affordable for everyone.
Without going in too much technical detail, Nanofluids consist of tiny little metal particles being added to conventional liquids. The idea behind this process is for cooling purposes. Water alone will have somewhat efficient cooling characteristics, but metal has to ability to absorb a lot more heat than water alone. With the two combined, greater cooling capabilities can be achieved; some of the system available act on the same principle as a radiator and have found great use in HVAC systems.
The challenge researchers are currently being faced with is the stability of the molecular structure. Because of the very different chemical characteristics of the two, it makes it difficult for the bond to hold for any extended period of time.
Some of the areas where Nanofluids might be of great interests would be in the cooling of engines, industrial equipment gearboxes or transmissions and maybe even computers. Some of the restrictions imposed on semiconductor engineers are the ability to cool down computer processors’ in the high Gigahertz operating range. Nanofluids would be utilized to cool down the processor thereby allowing much faster processing speed. Although still at the experimental stage for computer, Nanofluids have been successfully implement in the industrial world. The technology is still quite expensive, but with time commercial applications should be more affordable for everyone.
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