PREDICTION OF THERMAL-CONDUCTIVITY OF BINARY AZEOTROPIC LIQUID-MIXTURES

It is essential to have reliable thermal conductivity data to design heat and mass transfer contacting units especially when the process materials, particularly azeotropes, have unusual properties. Such data have to be measured experimentally since a reliable predictive method has not yet been developed. As a step in this direction, a procedure is proposed for predicting the thermal conductivity of azeotropic liquid mixtures based on the characterization factor model originally due to Barrett. The method is a significant improvement on other techniques currently used and gives good results in general. The associated characterization factor used in the procedure is determined by solving the proposed equations simultaneously and automatically gives both the estimated value of the thermal conductivity and characterization factor. This suggests that the factor is a function of composition and not constant as assumed previously. The method can also be used to predict the thermal conductivities of other binary and multicomponent liquid mixtures.