The thermal conductivity of benzene and toluene

The thermal conductivity of liquid toluene and benzene was measured in the temperature range 298 to 370 K, near the saturation line, using an absolute transient hot-wire technique. The measurements were made in a modified version of an existing instrument, equipped with a new automatic Wheatstone bridge, computer controlled. The bridge measures the time that the resistance of a 7-m-diameter platinum wire takes to reach predetermined values, programmed by the computer. The computer can generate up to 1024 analog voltages, via a 12-bit D/A converter. The accuracy of the measurements with this new arrangement was assessed by measuring the thermal conductivity of a primary standard, toluene, at several temperatures and was found to be of the order of 0.3%. Benzene was chosen because it is under study as a possible secondary standard for liquid thermal conductivity by the Subcommittee on Transport Properties of IUPAC.Paper presented at the Tenth Symposium on Thermophysical Properties, June 20–23, 1988, Gaithersburg, Maryland, U.S.A.