Rheological Analysis of Binary Eutectic Mixture of Sodium and Potassium Nitrate and the Effect of Low Concentration CuO Nanoparticle Addition to Its Viscosity

Mathieu Lasfargues; Hui Cao; Qiao Geng; Yulong Ding

doi:10.3390/ma8085194

Rheological Analysis of Binary Eutectic Mixture of Sodium and Potassium Nitrate and the Effect of Low Concentration CuO Nanoparticle Addition to Its Viscosity

Materials (Basel). 2015 Aug 11;8(8):5194-5204. doi: 10.3390/ma8085194.

Authors

Mathieu Lasfargues¹, Hui Cao², Qiao Geng³, Yulong Ding⁴

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Particle Science and Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. m.lasfargues@leeds.ac.uk.
² School of Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. h.cao@bham.ac.uk.
³ School of Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. GXQ471@student.bham.ac.uk.
⁴ School of Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. Y.Ding@bham.ac.uk.

Abstract

This paper is focused on the characterisation and demonstration of Newtonian behaviour of salt at both high and low shear rate for sodium and potassium nitrate eutectic mixture (60/40) ranging from 250 °C to 500 °C. Analysis of published and experimental data was carried out to correlate all the numbers into one meaningful 4th order polynomial equation. Addition of a low amount of copper oxide nanoparticles to the mixture increased viscosity of 5.0%-18.0% compared to the latter equation.

Keywords: copper oxide; molten salt; nanoparticle; rheology; solar salt; viscometer.