IMAGINE you could cut your electricity bill simply by adding a pinch of special powder to the coolant in your fridge. What if the same stuff could also reduce your car's fuel consumption, improve your home's central heating and make electricity that little bit cheaper? It might sound fanciful, yet it turns out that there is more to this dream than fairy dust.
Back in the early 1990s, engineers made a remarkable discovery: adding nanometre-sized particles to a liquid makes it far more effective at carrying away heat than anyone expected. This was exciting news. Keeping machinery cool is a hugely expensive business, in the power industry, in motor vehicles and in electronics of all kinds. Improvements of just a few per cent could potentially save billions. It seemed that there were fortunes to be made, and saved, thanks to nanopowders.
Conflicting results soon left experts scratching their heads, and ...
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