Investigation of optical properties and radiative transfer of TiO2 nanofluids with the consideration of scattering effects

Schematic of radiative transfer of nanofluids in a cuvette. [Display omitted] •Monte Carlo method with Mie theory was developed to calculate RTE of nanofluids.•Scattering effects was considered during radiative transfer analysis of nanofluids.•Size parameter was used as criteria to divide the nanofluids into two categories.•Optical properties of nanofluids with small particles vary smoothly with wavelength.•Nanofluids with large particles oscillate with wavelength due to diffraction peaks. The optical properties of nanofluids need to be specified accurately to determine the effectiveness of nanofluids in photocatalytic reactions. In this study, the Monte Carlo method combined with the Mie scattering phase function was developed to calculate the optical properties and radiative transfer of TiO2 nanofluids. The scattering effects caused by the directional scattering properties of the nanoparticles were considered during radiative transfer analysis of nanofluids. Size parameter (χ) was adopted as the criteria to divide the nanoparticles into two categories: small particle (χ