Miniature Wet-Bulb Technique for Measuring Gas Concentrations in Condensing or Evaporating Systems

Abstract

An analysis is presented to show that a miniature wet-bulb/dry-bulb probe can provide easy, rapid, and accurate point measurements of noncondensable gas concentrations in condensing or evaporating systems. The probe consists of a liquid-soaked porous sphere as small as 0.5 mm in diameter with a fine-gauge thermocouple embedded at its center. Performance of the probe is shown to improve with decreasing wet-bulb size. Measurements of only the total pressure and point wet-bulb temperature are needed to determine the local gas concentration for most gas-vapor systems. The use of the technique in systems with steep concentration gradients is demonstrated by application to the well-studied problem of the gas-loaded two-phase thermosyphon. 195pt