Transport Property Measurements on the IUPAC Sample of 1,1,1,2-Tetrafluoroethane (R134a)

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an international project coordinated by the Subcommittee on Transport Properties of Commission I.2 of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The project has been conducted to investigate the large discrepancies between the results reported by various authors for the transport properties of R134a and culminates the effort which was initially described in 1995. The project has involved the remeasurement of the transport properties of a single sample of R134a in nine laboratories throughout the world in order to test the hypothesis that at least part of the discrepancy could be attributed to the purity of the samples. This paper provides an intercomparison of the new experimental results obtained for the viscosity and thermal conductivity in the vapor, liquid, and supercritical gas phases. The viscosity measurements were made with a variety of techniques including the vibrating wire, oscillating disk, capillary flow, and falling body. Thermal conductivity was measured using transient bare and anodized hot wires, steady-state anodized hot wires, and light scattering. Agreement between a variety of experimental techniques using the standard round-robin sample is necessary to demonstrate that some of the discrepancies in earlier results were due to sample impurities. Identification of disagreement between data using one experimental technique relative to other techniques may suggest modifications that would lead to more accurate measurements on these highly polar refrigerant materials. It is anticipated that the new data which have been measured on this IUPAC round-robin sample will aid in the identification of the reliable data sets in the literature and ultimately allow the refinement of the IUPAC reference-data correlations for the transport properties of R134a.