Construction and in-situ characterisation of high-temperature fixed point cells devoted to industrial applications

¹ Laboratoire Commun de Métrologie (LNE-Cnam), 61 rue du Landy, 93210 Saint-Denis, Paris, France
² TUBITAK Ulusal Metroloji Enstitusu (TUBITAK-UME), Yerleşkesi Barış Mah. Dr. Zeki Acar Cad.1, Gebze, Turkey
³ CEA, DEN, Cadarache, STRI/LMA, 13108 ST Paul lez Durance, France
⁴ National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Hampton Road, Teddington, Middlesex, TW11 0LW
⁵ University of Idaho, 1116 Science Center Drive, Idaho Falls, Idaho 83402, USA

^a Corresponding author: Mohamed.sadli@cnam.fr

Published online: 19 August 2014

Abstract

Among the activities of the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) project HiTeMS one work package is devoted to the development and testing of industrial solutions for long-standing temperature measurement problems at the highest temperatures. LNE-Cnam, NPL, TUBITAK-UME have worked on the design of high temperature fixed points (HTFP) suitable for in-situ temperature monitoring to be implemented in the facilities of CEA (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives). Several high temperature fixed point cells were constructed in these three national metrology institutes (NMIs) using a rugged version of cells based on the hybrid design of the laboratory HTFP developed and continuously improved at LNE-Cnam during the last years. The fixed points of interest were Co-C, Ru-C and Re-C corresponding to melting temperatures of 1324 °C, 1953 °C and 2474 °C respectively. The cells were characterised at the NMIs after their construction. Having proved robust enough, they were transported to CEA and tested in an induction furnace and cycled from room temperature to temperatures much above the melting temperatures (> +400 °C) with extremely high heating and cooling rates (up to 10 000 K/h). All the cells withstood the tests and the melting plateaus could be observed in all cases.