The PVT properties of water

Abstract

The Fourth International Conference on the properties of Steam was convened by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in Philadelphia in September 1954, primarily for the purpose of encouraging research. A review of the properties of steam that had been measured up to that time was presented by Keyes & Keenan (1955), and the Conference recommended that accurate new measurements were required at temperatures to 800 °C and pressures to 1000 atm. As a contribution to the programme of measurement that resulted from the conference, accurate measurements of the PVT properties of water, both as liquid and vapour, were undertaken in these laboratories. The guiding aim of this work is to make the measurements as accurately as is practicable. A survey of previous measurements showed that the density of water under pressures up to 1 kb had not been measured at any temperature to the accuracy that current techniques are capable of. We have, therefore, undertaken measurements on the liquid and vapour starting at 0 °C. The first part of the project has been to determine the specific volume in the liquid region between 0 and 150 °C and up to 1 kb, and the present paper reports the apparatus used and the results of this work. The experimental techniques used in this region are described in part I. The compressions in the range 0 to 150 °C and 5-30 to 1026 b are reported in part II.