ABSTRACT
New experimental data on the thermal conductivity of propane and n-butane have been reported since the last correlations proposed by Holland et al. [1] in 1979 and Younglove et al. [2] in 1987. These new experimental data, covering a temperature range of 110 K – 700 K and a pressure range of 0.1 MPa – 70 MPa, are used together with the previously available data to develop an empirical correlation for the thermal conductivity of gaseous and liquid propane. The quality of the data is such that the thermal conductivity correlation for propane is estimated to have an uncertainty of about ±5% except near the critical region, where the uncertainty in the equation of state of Younglove et al. [2], increases the uncertainty of the correlation to 8% at the 95% confidence level.
For n-butane, the experimental data for the thermal conductivity is scattered by ±10%. Only a preliminary empirical correlation can be proposed for n-butane, since additional measurements with high accuracy are needed. The thermal conductivity of n-butane can be estimated with this correlation with an uncertainty of about ±5% at the 95% confidence level, except the critical region where the only available set of data shows deviations up to 8%.
