ME411 Applied Thermodynamics Lab : VGEC experiments

Thermal Conductivity of Insulating Powder

Team members:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 9003007 Abhijith Rajiv 9003008 Gourav Dubey 900300 Roll 24 Roll 25

Aim:
To determine the thermal conductivity of given insulating powder.

Experimental setup
The setup consists of two concentric copper spherical shells with the inner sphere housing a heating coil. Asbestos-Magnesia powder is packed between the two shells. 6 thermocouples are attached to the outer surface of the inner sphere and 6 are attached to the inner surface of the outer sphere. A dimerstat varies the power supplied to the heating coil.

Abstract:
This simple setup can be used to experimentally determine the thermal conductivity (k) of any material that can properly fill up the space between the two spheres. As k is one of the most basic properties of heat transfer and as conduction happens almost in every case of heat transfer, a robust methodology to estimate k has always been necessary. A setup like this would be more accurate also as heat transfer would be almost uniform in all directions and the formulation used below captures this uniformity. As the heating coil is turned on, the inner sphere starts getting heated up. This heat is then carried radially outward by conduction. Thus the powder also starts getting heated up and by conduction through the powder the heat is transferred to the outer copper shell. From the outer surface of this shell, the heat escapes to atmosphere by convection. Thus as the temperature of this outer shell increases, the rate of heat transfer to the outside atmosphere also increases and finally a steady state is reached where the heat generated by the heating coil equals the heat released outside by convection and the temperature of the spheres and powder stays constant. By integrating Fouriers law of heat conduction, an expression for k is obtained as,

ME411 Applied Thermodynamics Lab : VGEC experiments Here q is the heat generated by heating coil, which is equal to the heat dissipated to outside atmosphere, ro and ri are the radii of the outer and inner sphere respectively and To and Ti are its temperatures. Analogous to electric resistance, every object in the path of heat transfer also provides a thermal resistance to the flow of heat. In general it is of the form,

As the heating coil is wound around the outside of the inside sphere, the thermal resistance in its path would be the sum of the thermal resistances to heat conduction offered by the powder and outer shell and thermal resistance to heat convection offered by the outside surface interfacing with air. As the thickness of the outer copper shell is small and as copper is a very good conductor of heat, its thermal resistance would be negligible when compared to the thermal resistance offered by the insulating powder. The total thermal resistance can hence be written as[1],

Thus it can be seen that the second term decreases with ro and first term increases. Thus there is a critical value of ro at which Rth is the maximum. This value ro is called critical radius and for this value the heat insulation of the setup would be the most efficient. This maximum value of Rth can be calculated by differentiating the above equation with respect to ro and equating it to zero, the solution of which would give critical radius. This was obtained as[1],

Here as the system is at steady state, ho can be calculated to be,

If the critical radius is greater than the radius of the outer shell, then the outer shell is said to be over designed or else under-designed. The insulation properties can thus be made better by adjusting this outer shell radius.

Data
ri (m) ro (m) Ao (m2) Tair (in C) 0.0525 0.1 0.125664 30 Sr. No. V (V)

1 118

2 147

ME411 Applied Thermodynamics Lab : VGEC experiments I (A) Heat Input (W) 0.88 0.74 103.84 108.78 224 241 223 241 224 240 227 247 227 247 225 243 87 90 77 79 78 80 87 90 82 84 92 102 225 243.1667 83.83333 87.5 0.529611 0.503127 15.34983 15.05467 0.069005 0.06684

T of inner sphere (in C)

T of outer sphere (in C)

Mean Inner Temp (in C) Mean Outer Temp (in C) k (in W/m C) ho (in W/m2 C) rcr (in m)

Assumptions
1. List the key assumptions used for your calculations. 2. List the top 5 factors that you think introduce errors into your measurements.

Results
1. Average Temperature = (Ti+To)/2 = 154.42 C 2. Thermal conductivity of given insulating powder at mean temperature = 0.53 W/m C

References
1. A Textbook on Heat Transfer, 4th edition by S.P. Sukhatme