Heat Transfer Behavior of Gaseous Mixtures Containing Helium and Argon or Nitrogen

Abstract

The relative heat transfer behavior of pure helium, argon, and nitrogen, as well as selected binary gaseous mixturescontainingheliumandeitherargonornitrogen,wasstudiedexperimentallybymeasuringthetemperature increase that each of these gases, or gas mixtures, experienced as they were forced to e ow through the bore side of a steam-heated copper “ tube” at progressively increasing gas e ow rates. The experimental results demonstrated that certain gaseous mixtures, and even some pure gases, under well-dee ned and specie c operating conditions, are moreefe cient in selected heattransferapplicationsthan purehelium alone. The costsavingsthat may bea result of diluting helium with another less expensive gas, and using that mixture in place of pure helium in certain gaseous heat exchange applications, can be signie cant. In addition, the use of more efe cient gas mixtures in selected heat transfer applications can also result in more compact, and less costly, heat exchanger hardware.