An Enhanced Prediction Method for Thermal Conductivity Of Organic Compounds and Their Mixtures in the Saturated Liquid State

A prediction method for the thermal conductivity of compounds belonging to the families of Organic Acids and Alcohols in the saturated liquid state is presented in this paper. The method covers the reduced temperature range 0.3 to well above 0.9. The aim of the research is to supply a very simple instrument useful for engineering purposes. The method evaluates thermal conductivity as a function of the reduced temperature and requires for each substance the knowledge of a parameter dependent upon easily available physical constants. The method is validated against experimental data available in literature. The average absolute deviations are usually less than 5%, with maximum absolute deviations generally less than 10%. INTRODUCTION Heat and mass transfer phenomena in organic compounds have been theoretically studied from several different points of view. Despite these efforts, theoretical models are frequently inaccurate while empirical methods are usually more accurate but they are often specialized and tuned to cover a small number of compounds and/or a limited temperature range. Based on the development of effective prediction formulas for several other families of organic compounds, in this paper the prediction method is extended to cover the families of Organic Acids and Alcohols. During past years we have developed a prediction method to evaluate the thermal conductivity of refrigerants and other organic compounds in their saturated liquid state. The related formulas required the knowledge of a few equilibrium properties and were effective over wide range of temperatures. Each formula was able to evaluate the thermal conductivity of each compound belonging to a refrigerant series or to other organic compound series. Namely, we developed specialized formulas for: Methane Series refrigerants, Ethane Series refrigerants, Alkanes, and Aromatic compounds. Few differences existed between the equations we were already conscious about the