The following is an excerpt from an article by Brown University published on phys.org.

Researchers from Tsinghua University and Brown University have discovered a simple way to give a major boost to turbulent heat exchange, a method of heat transport widely used in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, the researchers show that adding a readily available organic solvent to common water-based turbulent heat exchange systems can boost their capacity to move heat by 500%. That’s far better than other methods aimed at increasing heat transfer, the researchers say.

“Other methods for increasing heat flux—nanoparticle additives or other techniques—have achieved at best about 50% improvement,” said Varghese Mathai, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown and co-first author of the study, who worked with Chao Sun, a professor at Tsinghua who conceived of the idea. “What we achieve here is 10 times more improvement than other methods, which is really quite exciting.”

Continue reading the full article here.