Determination of Thermal Conductivity of Inorganic Salts at the Liquid/Solid Phase Transition Point

Abstract

Based on the relationship between the speed of the moving interface and the thermophysical properties of two phases during melting and solidification processes, a measuring apparatus was designed to determine the thermal conductivity of inorganic salts. Using sodium nitrate as the sample, an experiment was carried out to determine its thermal conductivity at the melting point. However, it was difficult to realize the one-dimensional conduction in phase change chamber, which caused the inaccuracy of the data of thermophysical properties from the analytical solutions. So the combination of experiment test and numerical simulation was applied. Compared the experimental result and corrective result of thermal conductivity of sodium nitrate with the value recommended in reference errors are less than 9%and 2%.