THE THERMAL-CONDUCTIVITY OF THE MOLTEN NANO3-KNO3 EUTECTIC BETWEEN 525-K AND 590-K

Molten salts are one of the few remaining classes of fluids for which standard-quality (+/- 1 % accuracy) data on thermal conductivity have not hitherto been available. We have therefore developed a new apparatus based on the transient hot-wire technique to obtain reference-quality measurements of the thermal conductivity of molten salts at high temperatures. Liquid metal-filled quartz capillaries served as insulated hot wires in our method, and in addition, a two-wire technique was used in order to obtain absolute values of the thermal conductivity. New data for the NaNO3-KNO3 eutectic between 525 and 590 K are reported in this paper and comparisons with other recent measurements are shown.