A Miniature Bomb Calorimeter for Small Biological Samples

Abstract

A new miniature bomb colorimeter capable of burning samples from 5 to 100 mg is described. The calorimeter system is of the non-adiabatic type, is inexpensive to construct, easy to operate, and has a precision better than 1% with benzoic acid. Its precision with biological materials in normally better than 2.5%. For every 100 cal heat output a reading of 0.7631 S.D. 0.0071 mV was obtained. The calorific values of duplicate samples of biological material burned in the new bomb calorimeter and the McEwan and Anderson model are compared. The precision of the two bombs is comparable.