Effective viscosity of magnetic nanofluids through capillaries.

The simultaneous effect of magnetic field and temperature on the capillary viscosity of magnetic nanofluid is an important parameter for a new class of applications such as nanoduct flow, nanomotors, micro- and nanofluidic devices, for transformer cooling, magnetic targeted drug delivery, etc. The effective viscosity of a nanofluid is explained based on the rotation of the particles and the effect of torque on it due to an externally applied magnetic field. Two types of fluids are used here, temperature-sensitive and non-temperature-sensitive magnetic nanofluids. In both types of fluids, decrease in effective viscosity with temperature is observed, but in both cases the mechanism for the decrement is quite different. One is due to temperature dependence of the magnetic moment and the other is due to removal of the secondary surfactant. For temperature-sensitive magnetic nanofluids, a Curie temperature of ~80 °C is extracted from this study. For non-temperature-sensitive magnetic nanofluids ~65% of the secondary surfactant is removed for a change in temperature, ΔT = 40 °C. This is analogous with removal of a drug from magnetic particles for targeted drug delivery. Further, a linear dependence of effective viscosity with different capillary size and ξ (angle between magnetic field and flow direction, ξε[0,π/2]) is also observed. This linear dependence can also be a good approximation for the study of magnetic drug targeting, as in the human body the capillaries are of different sizes, and the externally applied magnetic field is not always parallel or perpendicular to the drug flow direction.