Thermal Conductivity of Binary Mixtures of Diatomic and Monatomic Gases

Abstract

Thermal conductivity of the binary mixtures of O₂–He, O₂–Ne, O₂–Kr, and O₂–Xe have been measured at 30°C and 45°C for various compositions by using the thick‐wire‐variant of the hot‐wire method. For pure O₂ the experimental value of the thermal conductivity is lower than that given by the recent theory of Hirschfelder based on the assumption of local chemical equilibrium, and consequently the values calculated from Hirschfelder's formula for the mixture conductivities are also expected to be higher than the experimental values which is actually found to be so for the mixtures investigated here. The agreement becomes excellent when the experimental values of the conductivity of pure O₂ are used to calculate the mixture conductivities. The formula for the mixture conductivities has been tested in detail and was found to give satisfactorily the composition dependence. The simpler formula for the thermal conductivity of gas mixtures given by Mason and Saxena has also been tested.