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Enhancing the thermal conductivity of a heat transfer fluid with the incorporation of nanomaterial is a widely known technique to achieve an efficient cooling system where such fluid, incorporated with nanomaterial is popularly known as nanofluid. However, the complexities in synthesizing the desired nanomaterial sand difficulties in incorporating them to the heat transfer fluid due to their poor dispersion ability opens up huge scope for carrying out further research in this field. Therefore, in the current work, we report, a simply synthesized amorphous carbon nanotubes (ACNT) and alumina (Al2O3) nanoparticle based nanocomposite that can easily disperse in engine oil (a class of heat transfer fluid) and can significantly improve its thermal conductivity. In our work, ACNTs with the length of ⁓ 4 µm and diameter of ⁓ 200 nm was synthesized by simple solid state reaction method whereas alumina nanoparticles with the dimension of ⁓50 nm were separately synthesized by sol-gel method. Then the nanocomposite was prepared by simply mixing them in liquid medium, followed by drying. Structural characterizations were carried out through x-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopic and high resolution transmission electron microscopic studies. The nanofluid was formulated by dispersing the nanocomposite in the base fluid (engine oil) with variation in loading and subsequently thermal conductivity was measured by Transient Hot Wire (THW) method. The maximum improvement in the thermal conductivity of ⁓ 20% was obtained with 0.04 vol. % of nanocomposite loading. So, all in all, it can be stated that ACNT and alumina naoparticle based nanocomposite was successfully prepared and its application in enhancing thermal conductivity of engine oil has successfully been shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]