Weight-controlled capillary viscometer

Rafael M. Digilov and M. Reiner Citation: Am. J. Phys. 73, 1020 (2005); doi: 10.1119/1.2060718 View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.2060718 View Table of Contents: http://ajp.aapt.org/resource/1/AJPIAS/v73/i11 Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers

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Weight-controlled capillary viscometer

Rafael M. Digilova and M. Reiner
Department of Education in Technology and Science, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel

Received 27 April 2005; accepted 29 July 2005 The draining of a water column through a vertical discharge capillary tube is examined with the aid of a force sensor. The change of the mass of the liquid in the column with time is found to be not purely exponential as implied by Poiseuilles law. Using observed residuals associated with a kinetic energy correction, an approximate formula for the mass as a function of time is derived and excellent agreement with experimental data is attained. These results are veried by a viscosity test of distilled water at room temperature. A simple and inexpensive weight-controlled capillary viscometer is proposed that is especially suitable for undergraduate physics and chemistry laboratories. 2005 American Association of Physics Teachers. DOI: 10.1119/1.2060718 I. INTRODUCTION Viscosity is a key concept in uid mechanics and characterizes the resistance of a uid to ow due to internal friction forces. For laminar ow of an incompressible liquid through a pipe of radius r, the pressure drop Pc caused by viscous losses across a pipe of length Lc, is given by the HagenPoiseuille law1 8Lc Pc = 2 u , r 1 8LcS dm , r4g dt

mt =

which, after separation of variables, can be directly integrated to give the exponential decay of the liquid-mass in the column mt = m0 exp t/ , where m0 is the reference mass at time t = 0, and 8 L cS r 4 g 6

where is the dynamical viscosity of the liquid and u is the mean ow velocity. For laminar ow to be valid the Reynolds number1 Re = 2ru

is the characteristic time, independent of m0 and is governed by the kinematics viscosity = / alone. If we t Eq. 6 to experimental measurements of the liquid mass in a tank versus time, we can nd and calculate the viscosity4 from Eq. 7

= K ,

where is the density of a liquid, should be smaller than 2000. The resistance of a liquid to ow can be determined by a simple apparatus consisting of a tank of constant crosssection S drained by gravity through a discharge capillary tube connected horizontally at depth h below the free surface of the liquid in the tank.2,3 The liquid entering the capillary is at high pressure due to the weight of the liquid above it, while the other end of the pipe is only under atmospheric pressure. Thus, the pressure drop along the capillary tube is the hydrostatic pressure which decays as the liquid ows Pct = ght = mtg , S 3

where g is the gravitational eld and mt is the liquid mass in the tank at time t. For approximately steady ow, we can express u in terms of the mass loss rate 1 dm , u= 4 r dt 4

where K = r4g / 8LcS is the apparatus constant. Many authors5,6 overlook the fact that the plot of mt reveals the existence of systematical residuals that cast doubt on the validity of the exponential form in Eq. 6, and hence, on its underlying assumptions. Specically, the data show that mt decays less steeply than implied by Eq. 6. The reason is that Eq. 1 reects the equality of the viscous and driving pressure forces, whereas the liquid leaving the tube moves at a nite velocity.7 In this paper we consider the effect of the kinetic energy correction on the decay of a liquid in a tank drained under gravity through a vertical discharge capillary tube. The solution is veried with the aid of a force sensor by continuously measuring the variation of the water weight in the column as a function of time. A novel weight-controlled capillary viscometer is then suggested. II. THEORY Consider the discharge of a viscous liquid through a vertical capillary tube connected to the bottom of an open to air liquid cylindrical column tank of constant cross-section see Fig. 1. For quasi-steady ow, the pressure distribution in the system is governed by the Bernoulli-Poiseuille equation8
2005 American Association of Physics Teachers 1020

where the negative sign means the liquid-mass is decreasing. In this case Eq. 1 yields
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Fig. 1. Diagram of weight-controlled capillary viscometer.

Fig. 2. Plots of the decay of the liquid mass in the tank vs time for distilled water.

1 2 P c = g h + L c + 2 u2 t uc ,

mt =

where ut and uc are, respectively, the mean velocities of the liquid in the column and the capillary tube, gh + Lc is the hydrostatic pressure, h is the column height, Lc is the length of the capillary, and Pc is the pressure drop due to the viscous losses given by Eq. 1, and is a parameter that depends on ow conditions according to the empirical rule9

m0 + LcStexp t/ L cS t . 1 m0 + LcSt/21 exp t/ 16

Similarly, for a capillary tube connected horizontally to the tank, we have mt = m0 exp t/ . 1 m0/21 exp t/ 17

= 0.037Re.

10

Assume that the inside cross-section of the capillary tube Sc be much smaller than that of the storage tank St, that is, Sc St. Then the continuity equation for an incompressible liquid ucSc = utSt, yields that ut uc. We omit the ut term in Eq. 9 and nd 8Lc gh + gLc = 2 uc + u2 c, r which with Eqs. 3 and 4 can be rewritten as m + L cS = dm dm + dt dt 11

Equation 16 links the model incorporated in Eq. 9 to the experimental results to be presented in Secs. III and IV. The advantage of Eq. 17 compared to Eq. 6 is its mathematical consistency modied by the kinetic energy correction which reduces to Eq. 6 as 0. III. EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP The experimental system is shown schematically in Fig. 1. It consists of a glass cylinder tank of constant cross section area St = 1.293 103 m2 and length 0.4 m, lled with distilled water and hooked vertically to a force sensor. The latter is rigidly mounted on a metallic stand and connected through a data logger to a personal computer. A discharge capillary tube with inside diameter 1.00 mm and length 0.198 m is attached vertically to the bottom of the glass cylinder so that the liquid can ow with nite velocity. The apparatus geometry is consistent with the requirement, 4 M / 2 1, assumed in Eq. 16 with K = 9.65 0.17 1010 m2 s2. The force sensor continuously logs a record of the liquid weight in the column. The experimental data for mtg was tted to Eq. 16 with and as tting parameters. IV. RESULTS Figure 2 shows a typical plot of mt. Supercially, the decay pattern appears to be exponential, but a t of an exponential curve to the experimental data shows this t to be misleading, while the t to Eq. 16 with tting parameters = 961.5 1.9 s, = 213.8 2.8 g1 s2, and 4 M / 2 0.67 is excellent as is seen in Fig. 2. Approximate exponential decay is observed for short time, but for longer times, the exponential t is not as good see Fig. 2. It is signicant that the decay of mt is apparent in both parameters and . If mt
Rafael M. Digilov and M. Reiner 1021

12

where is dened by Eq. 7, and is

St . r g
2 4

13

After the change of variables, M = m + LcSt, Eq. 12 gives a quadratic equation for dM / dt with the solution dM = dt 2

1+

4 M 1 . 2

14

If we assume 4 M / 2 1, we may expand the square root in Eq. 14 and omit the cubic and higher order terms to obtain

M dM 1 2M . dt

15

With the initial condition M t=0 = m0 + LcSt, where m0 is the reference liquid-mass in the column, Eq. 15 can be directly integrated to give
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could be described by Poiseuilles law alone, it would affect only the parameter . Because 0, this approach is inadequate for a nite discharge velocity. Note that the effect of the kinetic correction is apparent in both the parameters and . The ow parameter as calculated by Eq. 13 is 1.0 0.02, and the Reynolds number, dened in Eq. 10, is Re 730. If we use the measured density of the distillated water with an Erlenmeyer ask and balance method, = 998 kg m3, we nd that the viscosity at temperature 23.5 0.1 C determined by Eq. 8, is = 0.926 0.018 103 Pa s which, within the estimated uncertainty, is consistent with the value 0.927 103 Pa s calculated from

and the ability to make accurate measurements over a relatively broad shear rate range in a single measurement without any changes of the geometry. The apparatus is easily constructed and does not require a way of generating constant pressure drop across the capillary. It can be used for both measurements of the dynamic viscosity of Newtonian uids and teaching the dynamics of incompressible uids. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported by the Israel Ministry of Absorption and Immigration. Measurements were carried out by physics teacher students Z. Weizman and E. Butzhak within the student research laboratory project.

T = a exp bT + c exp dT ,

18

with the coefcients a = 1.049 103 Pa s, b = 4.656 102 K1; c = 7.267 104 Pa s, and d = 9.935 103 K1 were determined by tting the widely accepted reference data for water10 to Eq. 18. The uncertainty in the capillary diameter measurement was 0.4%. The capillary length was measured with uncertainty 0.05%. The uncertainty in the cross-section of the glass column measurement was 0.16%, and the tting parameter was determined with the uncertainty 0.2%. Thus, the instrumental error of the viscosity determination is 2%. V. CONCLUSION We have derived an approximate formula modied by the kinetic energy correction for the time dependence of the mass of a liquid in a tank draining under gravity through a capillary tube. The derivation is an example of a perturbation theory problem in which the basic balance is frictional and a small correction due to inertia is added. The accuracy of the theoretical treatment and experimental measurements was veried by the viscosity determination of distilled water at room temperature. The accuracy with which the viscosity data can be obtained can be further improved by a more precise measurement of the capillary diameter. The essential feature of weight-controlled viscometer is simplicity, that is, ease of operation and no moving parts,

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic mail: edura@tx.technion.ac.il 1 B. S. Massey, Mechanics of Fluids Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, 6th ed. 2 J. R. Smithson and E. R. Pinkston, Half-life of a water column as a laboratory exercise in exponential decay, Am. J. Phys. 28, 740742 1960. 3 G. T. Hageseth, Surface and kinetic energy densities: A uid dynamics laboratory exercise, Am. J. Phys. 54, 10111014 1986. 4 L. C. Cerny, Absolute viscosity of water, a student experiment, Am. J. Phys. 29, 708709 1961. 5 T. B. Greenslade, Simulated secular equilibrium, Phys. Teach. 40, 2123 2002. 6 S. J. Fairman and T. A. Walkiewicz, Fluid ow with Logger Pro, Phys. Teach. 41, 345349 2003. 7 S. H. Maron, M. I. Krieger, and A. W. Sisko, A capillary viscosimeter with continuously varying pressure head, Am. J. Phys. 25, 971976 1954. 8 C. E. Synolakis and H. S. Badeer, On combining the Bernulli and Poiseuille equationA plea to authors of college physics texts, Am. J. Phys. 57, 10131019 1989. 9 M. R. Cannon, R. E. Manning, and J. D. Bell, Viscosity measurement: The kinetic energy correction and a new viscometer, Anal. Chem. 32, 355358 1960. 10 J. V. Sengers and F. T. R. Watson, Improved international formulations for the viscosity and thermal conductivity of water substance, J. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data 15, 1291 1986.

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Am. J. Phys., Vol. 73, No. 11, November 2005

Rafael M. Digilov and M. Reiner

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