Estimating thermal conductivity of hydrocarbons

Thermal conductivity is an important property of liquids providing a measure of a materials' ability to conduct heat. It is difficult, however, to measure the thermal conductivity at saturation, and thus, single-phase measurements will be extrapolated to saturation conditions. The higher thermal conductivities and larger temperature gradients cause a greater heat flux in a one-dimensional system with correspondingly larger responses to changes in gas thermal conductivity. A new correlation in which four coefficients are used to correlate the thermal conductivity and temperature of liquid paraffin hydrocarbons was reported. The equation is K = a+bY+cY2+dY3, where K is the thermal conductivity and parameters X and Y are independent variables, which are either temperature, molecular weight or relative density, depending un the type of fluids.