Capillary flow viscometer

Capillary Viscometers. Capillary flow measurement is a popular method for measuring viscosity (21,145,146) it is also the oldest. A Hquid drains or is forced through a fine-bore tube, and the viscosity is determined from the measured flow, appHed pressure, and tube dimensions. The basic equation is the Hagen-Poiseuike expression (eq. 17), where Tj is the viscosity, r the radius of the capillary, /S.p the pressure drop through the capillary, IV the volume of hquid that flows in time /, and U the length of the capillary. 

The Ubbelohde viscometer is shown in Figure 24c. It is particularly useful for measurements at several different concentrations, as flow times are not a function of volume, and therefore dilutions can be made in the viscometer. Modifications include the Caimon-Ubbelohde, semimicro, and dilution viscometers. The Ubbelohde viscometer is also called a suspended-level viscometer because the Hquid emerging from the lower end of the capillary flows down only the walls of the reservoir directly below it. Therefore, the lower Hquid level always coincides with the lower end of the capillary, and the volume initially added to the instmment need not be precisely measured. This also eliminates the temperature correction for glass expansion necessary for Cannon-Fen ske viscometers. 

A number of instruments are based on the extmsion principle, including slit flow and normal capillary flow (Table 6). These instruments are useful when large numbers of quality control or other melt viscosity test measurements are needed for batches of a single material or similar materials. When melt viscosities of a wide range of materials must be measured, rotational viscometers are preferable. Extmsion rheometers have been applied to other materials with some success with adhesives and coatings (10,161). 

If one considers fluid flowing in a pipe, the situation is highly illustrative of the distinction between shear rate and flow rate. The flow rate is the volume of liquid discharged from the pipe over a period of time. The velocity of a Newtonian fluid in a pipe is a parabolic function of position. At the centerline the velocity is a maximum, while at the wall it is a minimum. The shear rate is effectively the slope of the parabolic function line, so it is a minimum at the centerline and a maximum at the wall. Because the shear rate in a pipe or capillary is a function of position, viscometers based around capillary flow are less useful for non-Newtonian materials. For this reason, rotational devices are often used in preference to capillary or tube viscometers. 

Here kH is the Huggins coefficient. The intrinsic viscosity decreases and the Huggins coefficient increases, as micelles become smaller. On micellization, ijsp/c has been observed to increase for some systems but to decrease for others, and unfortunately there are no firm rules governing which case will prevail for a given block copolymer solution. The viscosities of polymer solutions are measured in capillary flow viscometers, which are described in detail by Macosko (1994). 

PRESSURE-DRIVEN FLOW VISCOMETERS Capillary/Tube Viscometer... 

An in-line measurement is performed in a process line an on-line measurement is performed in a bypass loop from the main process line and the food may be returned to the main process line after measurement is performed. A near-line measurement is performed on a sample taken from a process line which is often discarded after measurement. Because foods are complex materials (e.g., suspensions, emulsions, gels), stmctural changes may take place during sampling (e.g., flow through a valve) for on-line and near-line measurements (Roberts, 2003). Nevertheless, in principle, the previously described capillary flow, and rotational concentric cylinder, plate-cone, and mixer viscometers may be used for in-line, on-line, and near-line measurements. In this respect, Tamura et al. (1989) proposed a helical screw rheometer as an on-line viscometer. The empirical measurement methods described previously are used primarily in near-line measurements. 

Classical viscometers maintain AP constant and calculate 7j by measuring the variations of flow rate Q. By contrast, the SCV uses the advantage of GPC, which already has a constant flow rate Q and allows the calculation of 17 by measuring the pressure drop variations AP across the capillary. At constant flow rate Q, the pressure drop is proportional to viscosity r], and at constant viscosity r], the pressure drop is proportional to flow rate Q. Consequently, in order to use the SCV as an accurate viscometer, the flow rate must be main-... 

Polymer viscosity is strongly shear dependent. If we use the bulk viscosity measured at different shear rates to describe the flow behavior in porous media, our first task is to calculate the shear rate which is equivalent to that in the bulk viscometer. To do that, we start with the capillary flow of a non-Newtonian fluid. 

Perhaps the most familiar technique is the capillary-flow method. The working principle is the Hagen-Poiseuille relationship between the flow rate through a tube of fixed diameter, the pressure drop, and the viscosity. In practice, because the capillary diameter appears to the fourth power in the working equation and is difficult to determine accurately, capillary viscometers are usually calibrated with reference fluids such as water or reference oils that are available from viscometer manufacturers and some national laboratories. 

In practical applications, flow of the material through an orifice is perhaps the most frequently encountered rheological phenomenon. It is then natural to be used for the viscosity measurement of suspensions (53-55). However, the flow through an orifice is not precise in terms of shear measurement because the shear rate is not well defined under such circumstances. To meet this objection, the orifice is in most cases extended to a tube. This leads to the capillary flow type of viscometers, the simplest, and for Newtonian fluids, the most accurate type, comprising the familiar Ostwald und Ubbelohde viscometers. The fully developed axial velocity in the laminar regime is given by... 

It should, however, be noted that there exist some hints that bicontinuous microemulsions behave elastically. This has been assumed to be due to the differences observed in measuring viscosities once in a Couette flow and in the other case by a capillary viscometer. Here it was observed that the values obtained with the capillary viscometer are markedly higher. It has been suggested that in capillary flow a component of elongational flow is observed and that in this type of flow elastic components can be observed much earlier than in shear flow [106,107]. 

Viscometers n. Instruments for measuring viscosity including mechanical probe and torque types as the Brookfield viscometer, capillary tube types as the Cannon-Fenske or Ostwald-Fenske, and flow through orifice types as the Ford cup. 

The results of low-temperature measurements (below 473 K) are not given usually in the Appendix. Numbers separated by a slash (/) show the minimal temperatures or pressures available in the publications (before a slash) and in the Appendix tables (after a slash). Sat. means that equilibrium pressure is not shown in the publications but was near (above) the saturation vapor pressure at measured temperature, a) - CF -capillary flow OD- oscillating disk QV-quartz viscometer FB-falling-body... 

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