Ice slurries have been used as environmentally-friendly secondary refrigerants. In addition to such ice slurries, aqueous solutions in slurry-state have also been put to practical use at temperatures below 0 oC. Urea-water mixture is a multi-component substance that has a eutectic point. If we can form a two-phase fluid substance by the liquid-solid phases at the eutectic point, it can be used as a fluid latent heat storage material, which will maintain the secondary refrigerant in a heat exchanger at constant temperature. In the present study, we propose a urea-water mixture as a novel functional thermal fluid that can be used as a fluid latent heat material. To demonstrate its feasibility, we first measured the latent heat and density of a urea-water mixture, and then used a counter-flow double tube heat exchanger to produce a liquid-solid two-phase flow of the urea-water mixture. This work demonstrates that it is possible to make a fluid latent heat storage material continuously from an aqueous solution at the eutectic point by flowing it through a double tube heat exchanger equipped with a stirrer.
