Measurement of the thermal diffusivity and speed of sound of hydrothermal solutions via the laser-induced grating technique

Abstract

Hydrothermal processing is being developed as a method for organic destruction for the Hanford Site in Washington. Hydrothermal processing refers to the redox reactions of chemical compounds in supercritical or near-supercritical aqueous solutions. In order to design reactors for the hydrothermal treatment of complicated mixtures found in the Hanford wastes, engineers need to know the thermophysical properties of the solutions under hydrothermal conditions. The author used the laser-induced grating technique to measure the thermal diffusivity and speed of sound of hydrothermal solutions. In this non-invasive optical technique, a transient grating is produced in the hydrothermal solution by optical absorption from two crossed time-coincident nanosecond laser pulses. The grating is probed by measuring the diffraction efficiency of a third laser beam. The grating relaxes via thermal diffusion, and the thermal diffusivity can be determined by measuring the decay of the grating diffraction efficiency as a function of the pump-probe delay time. In addition, intense pump pulses produce counterpropagating acoustic waves that appear as large undulations in the transient grating decay spectrum. The speed of sound in the sample is simply the grating fringe spacing divided by the undulation period. The cell is made from a commercial high pressure fitting and ismore » equipped with two diamond windows for optical access. Results are presented for dilute dye/water solutions with T = 400 C and pressures between 20 and 70 MPa.« less