Calibration of isothermal heat conduction calorimeters: Case of flow calorimeters

Abstract

In this article, the calibration of an isothermal heat conduction calorimeter used to measure the energy produced when mixing two liquids is carried out. A small amount of parameters that represents adequately the performance of the instrument has been obtained. In this sense, it has been proposed a simple model that offers a Transfer Function with two poles. The heat capacity of the injected liquids per time unit will be used as a parameter defining the validity limits of the calibration. It is shown a procedure for calibrating which consists in realizing some electrical and chemical calibrations with different pure liquids, different injection flows and mixtures with different behaviours, in order to determine the parameters of the model. This calibration is valid for the studied instrument and the used procedure is applicable to other similar thermal measuring instruments. With the calibration carried out, the studied calorimeter provides thermal measures with an uncertainty of 3%.