1Mechanical Engineering Department, IIT, Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad-382 424, India
2Mechanical Engineering Department, IIT Bombay, Powai, Mumbai-400 076, India
The present work aims to determine thermo-physical properties such as mass density, specific heat capacity, viscosity, enthalpy and thermal conductivity of argon at cryogenic temperatures and high pressures up to 20 MPa. The deviations from the ideal gas law led to development of many empirical models based on equation of state (EOS) such as van der Waals EOS, Benedict-Webb-Rubin (BWR) EOS, Peng-Robinson EOS, Soave-Redlich- Kwong, etc. to predict the properties of pure substances. The present paper describes the development of a simple computer program in MATLAB for prediction of the properties using Modified Benedict-Webb-Rubin (MBWR) equation of state.
The details of the thermodynamic calculations and the algorithm of the program are given so as to easily extend the program for any other cryogens. The calculated properties are compared with those obtained from standard software such as ASPEN, REFPROP and with the experimental values from the literature. The average deviation for all the calculated properties is less than ±2 %.
Properties, Cryogen, MBWR equation of state, Argon
