Thermodynamic Property Measurement

The precision of a thermodynamic measurement is one of the most important factors to develop reliable thermodynamic models. There is a range of different experimental methods which are used for measuring thermodynamic properties. One single technique alone can not provide the whole picture of the thermodynamics of any system. Several experimental techniques for measuring thermodynamic properties are listed in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1. Experimental Techniques and Measured Thermodynamic Properties.

Phase Diagram Data Measurement

Phase diagram data is as important as thermodynamic property data when doing thermodynamic modeling. Phase identification is a major process in understating phase equilibria. Lattice parameter and site occupancy that are directly related to phase property are also measured in order to understand more about the system. Experimental techniques for phase diagram data measurement are, Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA), Optical Microscope, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS), X-Ray diffraction (XRD), Neutron Diffraction), etc. The phase diagram data and corresponding experimental techniques are listed in Table 1.2. Since the thermodynamic data of multicomponent system is not easily available. Phase equilibria of binary or ternary systems become relatively important in order to build the thermodynamic model for predicting the phase diagram of multicomponent sytem. Therefore, reliable phase information of binary or ternary systems for large range of concentration and temperature have to be determined.

Table 1.2. Experimental Techniques and Obtained Phase Diagram Data.