Thermal Science and Engineering Progress 8 (2018) 130–135

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Thermal Science and Engineering Progress

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tsep

Enhancement of solar energy collection with magnetic nanofluids T

a a,b,⁎ a a
Zeyu Liu , Yuying Yan , Rong Fu , Mustafa Alsaady
a
Fluids & Thermal Engineering Research Group, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
b
Fluids & Thermal Engineering Research Centre, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Nowadays, energy crisis has caused widespread concerns about sustainable energy. Solar energy, as sustainable,
Magnetic nanofluids renewable energy, has attracted many attentions. Compared to other solar energy utilizations, solar collectors
Co-precipitation method are more efficient and commercial devices to collect solar energy. In our present study, well-dispersed magnetic
Solar energy nanofluids (MNFs) are reported that they exhibit excellent optical thermal conversion performance under the
suitable magnetic intensity and direction. In this work, the colloidal stability of MNFs was improved by con-
trolling pH within neutral value. One kind of surface modifications, oleic acid, was carried out to enhance the
interaction between particles and surfactants. The hydrodynamic diameter was found to be very close to the real
size of particle. Meanwhile, a highly efficient solar collection system was built based on controlling the optical
thermal performance of MNFs by magnetic fields. The experimental results showed that the thermal efficiency of
solar collectors increased with MNFs. The thermal efficiency of MNFs is much higher than base liquid with the
concentration of only 0.05 vol.%. Moreover, in the presence of the external magnetic field, the solar collector
efficiency increases to the maximum, 25% higher than the conventional parabolic trough and 12% higher than
the selective surface absorber. The study indicates that MNFs, even of low-content, have good absorption of solar
radiation, and can improve the outlet temperatures and system efficiencies. All these studies show the potential
of MNFs in solar thermal conversion applications.

1. Introduction needed to be solved is to enhance the heat transfer performance of

Environmental issues and energy shortages force researchers to
explore a new generation of green energy to replace the fossil fuels [1].
The utilization of solar energy has been paid many attentions since it is
sustainable, renewable and environmentally friendly [2]. The solar
thermal collection, as a more efficient and commercial method to
harvest solar energy, absorbs solar radiation and transfers heat to
working fluids. In this way, solar energy can be converted into internal
energy by working fluids. And heated fluids can be used for heating or
electricity productions. The collection efficiency depends on the ra-
diation absorption and heat transfer efficiency of working fluids.
Concentrated solar power (CSP) can help working fluids absorb
solar energy volumetrically [3]. Basically, CSP technology can be
classified into four types, including parabolic trough systems, parabolic
dish systems, solar power systems and linear Fresnel systems [4].
Among them, parabolic trough systems are technically studied and have
been used in both power generation and industrial process heat appli-
cation [5,6]. However, the cost of the parabolic trough systems is much
higher than that of the conventional ones. Therefore, many researchers
are committed to making them more cost competitive. The core issue
parabolic trough fundamentally. Some researchers have tried to opti-
mize the structure of the systems [7,8], while others are upgrading
working fluids to improve the heat transfer performances [9,10].
Nanofluids, liquids suspension with nano-scaled particles, have
been proven to be excellent thermal working fluids. The particles are
made of metal, metal oxide or semiconductor [11]. The dispersed
particles can help enhance the thermal conductivity of fluid sig-
nificantly compared to base liquid. Many efforts have been made to
develop nanofluids-based solar collection system [12–14]. It is found
that the collection efficiency associates intimately with the colloidal
stability of nanofluids [12,15]. Particle precipitations not only make
worse heat transfer performance of nanofluids, but also cause clogging
and pipe corrosion. In addition, particle aggregation augments the
viscosity of nanofluids, which often leads to a larger pressure drop [16].
MNFs is a special kind of nanofluids whose particles are super-
paramagnetic [17]. When the magnetic field is applied, magnetic par-
ticles will react to the field, bringing impacts on the magnetism and
physical properties of the whole suspension. Many works showed that
magnetic nanofluids exhibited better thermal physical properties and
heat transfer performance under a magnetic field. Philip [18] reported

⁎
Corresponding author at: Fluids & Thermal Engineering Research Group, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.
E-mail address: yuying.yan@nottingham.ac.uk (Y. Yan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsep.2018.08.015
Received 26 March 2018; Received in revised form 6 August 2018; Accepted 19 August 2018
2451-9049/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Z. Liu et al.
Fig. 1. Photograph of the experimental setup.
that the thermal conductivity of MNFs whose particle concentration
was 6 vol.% increased to 300% by applying the external magnetic field.
It was found that intensity, direction, and arrangement of the applied
magnetic field will all affect heat transfer characteristics of MNFs. Li
et al. [19] measured the convective heat transfer coefficient of the
aqueous magnetic fluid flow around a heated wire in both a uniform
magnetic field and a magnetic field gradient and found that heat
transfer of MNFs was affected by both direction and magnitude of ex-
ternal magnetic fields. Ghofrani and Dibaei [20] presented an experi-
mental investigation on forced convection heat transfer of aqueous
MNFs with the presence of an alternating magnetic field under a uni-
form heat flux. They investigated the effects of the alternating magnetic
field, volume fraction and the Reynolds number. The results showed
that the convection heat transfer was enhanced up to 27.6%. However,
few works were carried out to study the collection of solar energy by
using MNFs.
In this work, colloidal stability of MNFs was creatively improved by
controlling pH within a neutral value. MNFs can keep 8 months with
only tiny precipitation. Meanwhile, due to the thermomagnetic prop-
erty of MNFs, we innovatively introduced pH controlled MNFs to the
parabolic trough collection system with different magnetic field
strengths. The experimental results showed the contribution of external
magnetic field to photothermal conversion, and theoretically give a
mechanism explanation.
2. Methodology
2.1. Preparation of MNFs
The magnetic nanofluids were synthesized by co-precipitation
method. Typically, 13.5 g FeCl3·6H2O and 6 g of FeCl2·4H2O were firstly
dissolved in 150 mL deionized water. The solution was reacted at am-
bient temperature and bubbled with nitrogen for 15 min to remove
oxygen. 40 mL ammonium hydroxide was quickly added to the solution
under vigorous stirring. And then the mixture was heated to 60 °C for
1 h, and black precipitate was collected at the bottom of the flask by
using a magnet and washed with water several times until pH value
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Thermal Science and Engineering Progress 8 (2018) 130–135
Solar simulators
Chiller
Thermocouple
Reflector
Electromagnetic coil
Container
DC power supply
reached 7.
In the following, 50 g wet precipitate was dispersed into 200 mL
distilled water with ultrasonic treatment. The suspension was then
transferred to a three-necked flask equipped with a stirring paddle and
nitrogen inlet. After adding oleic acid, the suspension was stirred at
80 °C under the protection of nitrogen for 2 h. The particles were then
washed several times with ethanol and hexane until the upper solution
became transparent. After dumping the supernatant, oleic acid mod-
ified Fe3O4 particles were obtained. Modified magnetic nanoparticles
were then added to 200 mL water solution of sodium dodecyl sulfate
(25 mg/mL). After the mixture was kept at 80 °C for 2 h, particle-micelle
solution was formed.
2.2. Characterizations
The morphology and size of nanoparticles were observed by a
transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The samples which used for
TEM observation were prepared on a TEM copper grid by dropping
diluted particle dispersion and drying under a reduced pressure over-
night. TEM images were taken by a JEOL-2000 electron microscope
operating at 200 kV and equipped with a CCD camera. The size dis-
tribution was gained based on at least 300 of particles or clusters.
The dynamic size and size distribution of magnetic nanoparticles
was carried out by dynamic light scattering (DLS) (Autosize Loc-Fc-963,
Malven Instrument).
Acrystall ographic study of magnetic and composite particle powder
was performed on an X-ray diffract meter (D/MAX-IIIC, Japan). The X-
Ray Diffraction (XRD) patterns were taken from 20 to 90° (2θ) using Cu
Ka radiation; scanning speed was kept at 15°/min.
Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was carried out on a TGA-
SDTQ600 thermogravimetric analyser to measure the amount of sta-
bilized attached on the particles surfaces. The modified Fe3O4 nano-
particles were heated to 1000 °C under the protection of N2. The rate of
temperature increase was kept at 10 °C/min.
The magnetic properties of the particles were measured by using a
vibrating-sample magnetometer (VSM, HH-15, China) at 298 K with a
12 kOe applied the magnetic field.
Z. Liu et al. Thermal Science and Engineering Progress 8 (2018) 130–135

2.3. Experimental set up Table 1

Parameters of the parabolic trough and test conditions.
An experimental test bench was set up to investigate the photo- Parameters Values
thermal performance of magnetic nanofluids as shown in Fig. 1. Re-
spectively, the solar simulator contains three tungsten halogen lamps, Length of the receiver 500 mm
Width of the aperture 250 mm
which are similar to natural sunlight, produce a very stable and smooth
Outer diameter of absorbers 15 mm
spectral output. Therefore, it can be commonly used in solar beam Solar irradiance 1000 W/m2
experiments for solar simulator application. Moreover, in terms of Mass flow 0.02 kg/s
thermal radiation, the wavelength, ranging from 360 nm to 2500 nm, is
also very similar to sunlight [21]. Some experimental tests were carried
out for various distances of the light surface from the simulator surface The thermal efficiency can be calculated by Eq. (4)
to investigate the unevenness of variations in light distribution. The .
QU
absorber tube is made of borosilicate glass, which allows MNFs to ab- η=
sorb radiation directly. Three solenoids fed by transistorized regulated ID A C (4)
DC power supply were used to generate magnetic field parallel to the where η the efficiency of the parabolic trough is, ID is the direct solar
flow direction. The intensity of the magnetic field was measured with a radiation and A C is the area of the collector.
Gauss meter. A reflective mirror, with 1 mm thick high impact poly- The solar radiation uncertainty is less than 2%. The uncertainty of
styrene sheet, is used to concentrate the radiation to the absorber tube. mass flow is less than 1%. Uncertainties for inlet and outlet tempera-
A pyranometer is used to measure the solar radiation, which is in a good tures were less than 0.1 °C. Complex uncertainty was calculated by Eq.
agreement with British standards for testing a solar simulator. The flow (5) and was between 1% and 5.2%, which calculated by Eq. (5)
rate is measured by an ultrasonic flow meter, FLOWNETIX 100. Two
2 2 2 2
non-magnetic type T thermal couples are positioned to measure the
Uη = ⎛ ∂η. Um. ⎞ + ⎛ ∂η UI ⎞ + ⎛ ∂η UT ⎞ + ⎛ ∂η UT ⎞
⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟
D out in
inlet and outlet temperature. ⎝ ∂mf ⎠ ⎝ ∂ID ⎠ ⎝ ∂Tout ⎠ ⎝ ∂Tin ⎠ (5)
The schematic diagram of the test rig is shown in Fig. 2. MNFs store
in the container, which can be pumped up to the test section by a po-
sitive displacement pump. MNFs then flow back through a chiller, 3. Results and discussions
which can control the temperature of working fluids irradiated by solar
simulators. A water bath was used to control the inlet temperature of The stability of nanofluids is always one of the most significant is-
fluids. Magnetic fields were parallel applied along the flow direction. At sues. This is because nanoparticles have great tendency to aggregate in
the beginning of each test, the solar simulators were turned on firstly. base liquid caused by van der Waals attractive force. To solve this
They need 30 min to reach the maximum intensity and keep stable. problem, we synthesized MNFs by controlling pH value at a neutral
After that, inlet temperature of test section can be adjusted by water level. In this way, the surface potential of nanoparticles keeps strongest
bath and chiller to keep a stable condition. to ensure the maximum repulsive force among particles. It also means
The parameters of the parabolic trough are shown in Table 1. that MNFs synthesised can keep the maximum stability. Fig. 3 shows
The useful heat absorbed by MNFs is calculated by Eq. (1) the TEM image of oleic acid modified Fe3O4 nanoparticles. The particles
. .
are sphere-like in shape. The average size is 10 nm. Since oleic acid is
Qu = mf Cp,f (Tout−Tin) (1) modified on the surface of the nanoparticles, it is possible to make
. nanoparticles more dispersed in the nanofluids, which is beneficial to
where mf is the mass flow of MNFs, Cp,f is the specific heat capacity of two factors, namely steric effect and electrostatic repulsion. The first
MNFs which is calculated by Eq. (2) one is the effects of large molecules that come from the fact that oleic
Cp,f = (1−φ)Cp,w + φC p,np (2) acid occupies space. When nanoparticles are put close to each other,
this costs energy. The electrons around the particles want to stay away
where Cp,w and Cp,np are specific heat capacity of water and nano- from each other, which keep nanoparticles well-dispersed. Meanwhile,
particles, respectively. φ is the volume fraction of MNFs. The heat ca- the other factor is electrostatic repulsion, which relies on the electric
pacity is affected by the temperature. Therefore, the heat capacity at repulsive force arising between two particles possessing charges with
the mean temperature Tm can be calculated by Eq. (3) the same sign. According to the classic DLVO theory, increasing the
surface charges of particles will enhance electric repulsive force, thus
Tin + Tout
Tm = reducing the particles’ tendency to aggregate. Part of them exhibits
2 (3)
chain-like aggregates without clumping in the centre of TEM image. It

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the test bench.

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Z. Liu et al. Thermal Science and Engineering Progress 8 (2018) 130–135

Fig. 3. TEM image of Fe3O4 nanofluids formation and distribution. Fig. 5. XRD characterization of modified Fe3O4 nanoparticles in the presence of
sodium dodecyl sulfate.

was reported that such chain-like structure provides extra conduction

paths for the enhancement of effective conductivity, whereas large
aggregates and clumps sediment will lead to the decline in conductivity.
DLS measurement was carried out to investigate the colloidal sta-
bility of the MNF. As shown in Fig. 4, the hydrodynamic diameter of the
modified particles ranges from 3.2 to 10.2 nm, which is matched by the
TEM image in Fig. 3. Therefore, the particles are well dispersed in water
due to formation of particle–micelle complexes.
Fig. 5 gives the XRD pattern of dried sample of the nanofluids. The
pattern presents the characteristic peaks of cubic inverse spinel struc-
ture, indicating that the crystal structure of Fe3O4 nanoparticles was
also not changed after the modification of oleic acid and formation of
particle–micelle complexes.
As shown in Fig. 6, a 9.5% of weight loss occurred in the range of
200–400 °C, which can be attributed to decomposition of oleic acid and
surfactant on the Fe3O4 nanoparticles. The result suggests that sodium
dodecyl sulfate is chemically bonded on the surface of the magnetite
nanoparticles and the weight ratio of oleic acid and surfactant to Fe3O4
Fig. 6. TGA measurement of Fe3O4-CA.
nanoparticles reaches to ration of 1:9.
The magnetization characterization is supplied in Fig. 7. Due to the
modification of oleic acid, the saturation magnetization of the dried
sample was about 33.54 emu/g (emu per gram of nanoparticles (iron
oxides) in the ferrofluid), which was lower than the saturation

Fig. 7. VSM analysis of the magnetic hysteresis in MNFs.

magnetization of pure Fe3O4 nanoparticles with 50 emu/g. The hys-

tersis loop is minute, suggesting the modified particles exhibit super-
paramagnetism which is a form of magnetism appearing in small
magnetic nanoparticles. Therefore, nanoparticles inside form a regular
arrangement following the direction of applied magnetic fields. In our
Fig. 4. The size distribution of Fe3O4 nanofluids.

133
Z. Liu et al.
Fig. 8. Thermal efficiency of MNFs and base liquid in the presence of magnetic
field.
experiment, a magnetic field parallel to the direction of fluid flow was
applied. The magnetic field induced magnetic nanoparticles inside to
form the chain-like structures, which are able to accelerate more heat
transfer by optimizing heat transfer path and particle arrangement.
With the increase of chain strength, creating more bridges of thermal
energy conduction along the magnetic field direction.
Fig. 8 shows the thermal efficiency of 0.05 vol.% MNFs in the pre-
sence of external magnetic fields in the laminar region. The in-
stantaneous thermal efficiency relates the useful energy to the total
radiation incident on the surface of the collector as shown below.
ηi = FR (τα )−FR UL (Ti−Ta)/ GT (6)
where ηi is the thermal efficiency, Qu is the useful energy, Ac is the
surface area of solar collector, GT is the global solar radiation to the
solar collector, FR is heat removal factor of collector, UL is the overall
coefficient of heat losses, Ti and Ta are inlet temperature of test section
and ambient temperature respectively.
The experimental result shows that thermal efficiency enhances
with increasing magnetic field strength when the orientation of the
magnetic field is parallel to the flow direction. Using a glass tube to
allow nanoparticles absorb solar radiation can achieve higher efficiency
than selective surface absorber which is 13% higher than the selective
surface absorber. Moreover, when the magnetic field is up to 10.47mT,
thermal efficiency of MNFs in laminar condition is 13.4% higher than
the experimental results of Ghofrani and Dibaei [20]. Many mechan-
isms are put forward to explain the enhancement of heat transfer of
nanofluids, including Brownian motion induced micro-convection, the
aggregation of nanoparticles, ballistic phonon transport [20–24]. Lots
of literature show that conduction path through agglomerates in one of
the most important factors for the quick enhancement [25–28]. Under
the influence of magnetic field, magnetic particles form the chain-like
structure which accelerates the heat transfer in the working fluids. With
the enhancement of the magnetic field, the chain length also increases,
which creates more bridge of thermal energy conduction along the
magnetic field direction [29]. Meanwhile, chain-like structure improves
the optical properties of MNFs as well, because such structure allows
less radiation to transmit through the fluid [30]. Higher heat transfer
performance will be reached if the solar radiation is completely ab-
sorbed by MNFs. For all these reasons thermal efficiency of a solar
collector with direct absorber tube increases by using MNFs and be-
comes higher than a selective surface tube parabolic trough. Increasing
the magnetic field further will not affect the thermal efficiency because
the particles reach to a saturation magnetization. This work shows the
capability of using MNFs in direct absorption parabolic trough.
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Thermal Science and Engineering Progress 8 (2018) 130–135
4. Conclusions
In this work, a highly efficient solar collection system is developed
based on controlling the optic thermal performance of MNFs by mag-
netic forces. MNFs prepared can keep the maximum stability by con-
trolling pH within a neutral value. The characterization shows nano-
particles are uniform, and MNFs exhibit superparamagnetism. An
experimental comparison of thermal efficiency between base liquid and
ferrofluids with different magnetic strengths have been performed. The
results show that the thermal efficiency of 0.05% ferrofluids increases
6% than that of base liquid. Moreover, the thermal efficiency increases
to the maximum 41% when the magnetic field is up to 10.47 mT, which
is 13% higher than the selective surface absorber. It is also showed that
MNFs exhibit excellent thermal efficiency compared to base liquid and
selective surface absorber. Results showed that controlling pH value can
not only open the window to improve the stability of nanofluids, but
also make nanofluids more controllable in engineering fields.
Meanwhile, MNFs also exhibit great potential in photo-thermal con-
version.
Further work needs to be carried out to make it applicable. The
thermal and optical loss of the current work needs to be reduced.
Higher operation temperatures, higher concentration ratios, larger glass
tube with anti-reflection, using envelope to decrease the thermal loss,
and a high-quality reflector is required to compare the performance of
MNFs parabolic trough solar collector with the commercial parabolic
trough. Some other important influencing factors, magnetic directions
and flow conditions also need to be considered for the further study.
5. Conflict of interest
We confirm that we have no conflict of interest.
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