Procedural analysis of a new method for determining the Gibbs energy and experimental data on thermodynamic properties of liquid-metal coolants based on alkali metal alloys

A detailed procedural analysis is given and results of implementation of the new version of the effusion method for determining the Gibbs energy (thermodynamic activity) of binary and ternary systems of alkali metals Cs-Na, K-Na, Cs-K, and Cs-K-Na are presented. The activity is determined using partial pressures of the components measured according the effusion method by the intensity of their atomic beams. The pressure range used in the experiment is intermediate between the Knudsen and hydrodynamic effusion modes. A generalized version of the effusion method involves the pressure range beyond the limits of the applicability of the Hertz-Knudsen equation. Employment of this method provides the differential equation of chemical thermodynamics; solution of this equation makes it possible to construct the Gibbs energy in the range of temperatures 400 ≤ T ≤ 1200 K and concentrations 0 ≤ x _i ≤ 1.