Calibration of hydrometers

Abstract

After a brief description of the different methods employed in periodic calibration of hydrometers used in most cases to measure the density of liquids in the range between 500 kg m−3 and 2000 kg m−3, particular emphasis is given to the multipoint procedure based on hydrostatic weighing, known as well as Cuckow's method. The features of the calibration apparatus and the procedure used at the INRiM (formerly IMGC-CNR) density laboratory have been considered to assess all relevant contributions involved in the calibration of different kinds of hydrometers. The uncertainty is strongly dependent on the kind of hydrometer; in particular, the results highlight the importance of the density of the reference buoyant liquid, the temperature of calibration and the skill of operator in the reading of the scale in the whole assessment of the uncertainty. It is also interesting to realize that for high-resolution hydrometers (division of 0.1 kg m−3), the uncertainty contribution of the density of the reference liquid is the main source of the total uncertainty, but its importance falls under about 50% for hydrometers with a division of 0.5 kg m−3 and becomes somewhat negligible for hydrometers with a division of 1 kg m−3, for which the reading uncertainty is the predominant part of the total uncertainty. At present the best INRiM result is obtained with commercially available hydrometers having a scale division of 0.1 kg m−3, for which the relative uncertainty is about 12 × 10−6.