Rheological analysis of binary eutectic mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate and the effect of low concentration CuO nanoparticle addition to its viscosity

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.