Monitoring of hydrocarbon vapor diffusion in air using a thermal wave interferometer

A discussion on the use of thermal wave interference (TWI) for the monitoring of the transients of hydrocarbon in air is presented. The thermal wave signal was modeled using the logarithm-mixing model for the thermal diffusivity of a two-phase gas system in which the hydrocarbon vapor concentration in the air-filled TWI cell is a varying function of time. The time varying hydrocarbon vapor concentration was described assuming the simple Fick's model for mass diffusion of the hydrocarbon vapor in the stagnant air column of the TWI cell. The transient TWI signal amplitude data fitting yielded two parameters, namely, the saturation concentration and the characteristic diffusion time. From the corresponding values of the diffusion time the hydrocarbon mass diffusivities were straightforwardly obtained. The obtained values for the hydrocarbon mass diffusivities were found to be in good agreement with the ones reported in the literature. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.