High-Temperature Adiabatic Calorimeter for Constant-Volume Heat Capacity Measurements of Compressed Gases and Liquids

A high-temperature adiabatic calorimeter has been developed to measure the constant-volume specific heat capacities (c(V)) of both gases and liquids, especially fluids of interest to emerging energy technologies. The chief design feature is its nearly identical twin bomb arrangement, which allows accurate measurement of energy differences without large corrections for energy losses due to thermal radiation fluxes. Operating conditions for the calorimeter cover a range of temperatures from 250 K to 700 K and at pressures up to 20 MPa. Performance tests were made with a sample of twice-distilled water. Heat capacities for water were measured from 300 K to 420 K at pressures to 20 MPa. The measured heat capacities differed from those calculated with an independently developed standard reference formulation with a root-mean-square fractional deviation of 0.48 %.