Viscometer for use at High Temperatures and Pressures

Abstract

The study of liquids at high temperatures and pressures necessitates the use of gas as the pressurizing medium. A sealed collapsible Container, or a rigid Container with flexible bellows is often used to isolate the fluid from the pressurizing gas. These conditions make it very difficult to measure viscosity. Even more difficult is the study of fluids containing dissolved volatiles such as, in our case, water rich magmas. These fluids must be sealed in a Container to keep the water in and the pressurizing gas out. Our viscometer allows one to measure the viscosity of a fluid within a sealed Container, and is based on the work of Robinson and Smedley [1]. The device is a development of the torsionally oscillating quartz crystal technique used previously at low temperatures and high pressures [2,3].