Eur. Phys. J. E (2015) 38: 24
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2015-15024-5

Regular Article

Contribution to the benchmark for ternary mixtures: Measurement of the Soret and thermodiffusion coefficients of tetralin+isobutylbenzene+n-dodecane at a composition of (0.8/0.1/0.1) mass fractions by two-color optical beam deflection

Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bayreuth, D-95440, Bayreuth, Germany

^* e-mail: werner.koehler@uni-bayreuth.de

Received: 15 July 2014
Revised: 20 October 2014
Accepted: 3 February 2015
Published online: 24 April 2015

Abstract

Within the framework of an international benchmark test we have performed measurements of the Soret and thermodiffusion coefficients of the organic ternary mixture (0.8/0.1/0.1 mass fraction) of 1,2,3,4-tetrahydronaphthaline (THN), isobutylbenzene (IBB) and n -dodecane (n C12) at 298.15K by means of a two-color optical beam deflection technique (OBD). The data evaluation procedure is based on a least squares fitting routine for an approximate analytical solution for the Soret cell problem. The condition number of the contrast factor matrix and standard error propagation are used for an error estimation for the measured Soret and thermodiffusion coefficients. The Soret coefficients obtained are S ^′ _T(THN) = (1.20±0.09)×10^-3 K^-1, S ^′ _T(IBB) = (- 0.34±0.14)×10^-3 K^-1, and S ^′ _T(nC12) = (- 0.86±0.06)×10^-3 K^-1 and the corresponding thermodiffusion coefficients are D ^′ _T(THN) = (0.72±0.26)×10^-12 m^2(s K)^-1, D ^′ _T(IBB) = (- 0.22±0.42)×10^-12 m^2(s K)^-1, and D ^′ _T(nC12) = (- 0.50±0.16)×10^-12 m^2(s K)^-1. These results will be used as ground-based reference data for the DCMIX project, where thermodiffusion experiments of ternary mixtures are measured in a microgravity environment aboard the International Space Station (ISS).