An Approach to Make More Technical Thermal Properties Measure in Porous Media

Carles M. Rubio^1,

¹Department Agronomic Engineering and Biotechnology, Politechnic University of Catalonia, Spain

Cite this paper:
Carles M. Rubio. An Approach to Make More Technical Thermal Properties Measure in Porous Media. Applied Ecology and Environmental Sciences. 2014; 2(2):60-65. doi: 10.12691/aees-2-2-4

Abstract

There are three variables measured for the characterization of the thermal properties in porous media and soft rocks. These are the specific variables: heat capacity, thermal conductivity and their relationship with the thermal diffusivity. Recently, Decagon Devices has developed the KD2-Pro meter. This instrument is a useful device, which permits storing more than 4000 thermal data. This company has also improved the design of sensors for their specific use. KD2-Pro uses the infinite line heat pulse technique based on current standard ASTM D 5334. Nevertheless, it is not clear how to obtain the required reliability and accuracy in the measurements since neither the standard nor manufacturer’s user manual include any method or recommendation to develop a measuring set up. Therefore, a strong methodology is required to achieve the maximum efficiency when KD2-Pro is used. This work presents ThermalHyd as the first "stadium" towards the development of a laboratory and field methodology to obtain reliability, accuracy and rapidity in the analytical dataset of thermal properties in porous media and soft rocks. To carry out the objective several soils from Llobregat river delta plain were used to obtain very acceptable results such as the wetting up samples, being the static method more accurate than dynamic one. Another results were based on the mineralogy of the samples in terms to transferred the heat pulse. Eventually, the microwave oven as a technic to obtain reliable water content dataset was a robust method, especially for its accuracy and faster performance.

Keywords:
soil rock thermal conductivity thermal diffusivity volumetric heat capacity water content microwave

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