- Author
- Elam, S. K. | Tokura, I. | Saito, K. | Altenkirch, R. A.
- Title
- Thermal Conductivity of Crude Oil.
- Coporate
- Kentucky Univ., Lexington
- Journal
- Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science, 1988
- Sponsor
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- Paper 4
- Contract
- NBS-GRANT-60NANB7D0739
- Book or Conf
- National Bureau of Standards. Final Report. Volume 1. Papers Presented at Conferences and Submitted for Publication. Volume 2. Experimental Developments in the Combustion of Crude Oils. August 1, 1987-December 15, 1988, Saito, K. Editor(s), 186 pp, 1988.,
- Keywords
- crude oil | thermal conductivity | combustion
- Abstract
- The thermal conductivity of three typical crude oils, composed predominantly of aromatic and paraffinic compounds was measured using the transient, hot-wire method. The accuracy of the measurement technique for binary mixtures was proved by measuring the thermal conductivity of water-glycerol mixtures and comparing the results to accepted correlations for binary mixtures. Thermal conductivity for the crude oils is rather insensitive to changes in temperature for temperatures from 273 to 323 K. For two of the oils, the thermal conductivity is approximately 120 mW/m K while for the other it is approximately 130 mW/m K over the quoted 50 K temperature range. The crude oils are approximated as binary mixtures of aromatic and paraffinic components, and the measured data are least-square-error fit to the approximation that the mixture thermal conductivity is a log-mean average of the thermal conductivities of the pure components to establish effective thermal conductivites for the aromatic and paraffinic fractions of crude oils. These "pure component" thermal conductivities can be used to predict the thermal conductivity of crude oils of known aromatic and paraffinic content.