Advantages of Thermocouple

The following are the advantages of the thermocouples.

1. The thermocouple is cheaper than the other temperature measuring

devices.
2. The thermocouple has the fast response time.
3. It has a wide temperature range.

Disadvantages of the Thermocouples

1. The thermocouple has low accuracy.

2. The recalibration of the thermocouple is difficult.

Nickel-alloy, platinum/rhodium alloy, Tungsten/rhenium-alloy,

chromel-gold, iron-alloy are the name of the alloys used for making
the thermocouple.

Thermocouple Applications
Some of the applications of thermocouple include the following.

 These are used as the temperature sensors in thermostats in offices, homes,

offices & businesses.
 These are used in industries for monitoring temperatures of metals in iron,
aluminum, and metal.
 These are used in the food industry for cryogenic and Low-temperature
applications. Thermocouples are used as a heat pump for performing
thermoelectric cooling.
 These are used to test temperature in the chemical plants, petroleum plants.
 These are used in gas machines for detecting the pilot flame.
Thus, this is all about an overview of the thermocouple. From the above
information finally, we can conclude that the measurement of thermocouple
output can be calculated by using the methods like a multimeter, potentiometer,
and amplifier by output devices. The main purpose of the thermocouple is to
build consistent & direct temperature measurements in several different
applications.
Thermocouple Materials
Thermocouples are manufactured from various combinations of the
base metals copper and iron, the base-metal alloys of Alumel
(Ni/Mn/Al/Si), Chromel (Ni/Cr), Constantan (Cu/Ni), Nicrosil
(Ni/Cr/Si) and Nisil (Ni/Si/Mn), the noble metals platinum and
tungsten, and the noble-metal alloys of platinum/rhodium and
tungsten/rhenium.
Only certain combinations of these are used as thermocouples and
each standard combination is known by an internationally
recognized type letter, for instance type K is Chromel–Alumel. The
below table is shown the some of the material types and their
characteristics. The EMF–temperature characteristics for some of
these standard thermocouples are shown in Fig.3. These curves show
reasonable linearity over at least part of their temperature-measuring
ranges.
Laws of Thermocouple
The Peltier and Thomson effects explain the basic thermoelectric
principle. But, this is not sufficient to provide a better technique to
measure the voltage during the measuring situations. For this
purpose, we have three different laws of thermoelectric circuits to
provide useful tips to measure the temperature. These laws are
known as, law of homogeneous circuit, law of intermediate metals
and law of intermediate temperatures.
The first law, homogeneous circuit, states that in a circuit composed
of a single homogeneous metal, cannot generate an electric potential
by the application of even sufficient temperature difference between
two different points of the circuit.

The second law is also known as thermocouple law of intermediate

metals, states that the net EMF in a circuit consisting of
interconnections of a number of unlike metals, maintained at the
same temperature, is zero. That means, if other metal conductors are
inserted in the thermocouple circuit and the junctions of these
interconnected metal conductors are in same temperature, then
output emf will not be affected and remains same as it was made of
only two metals. The practical implication of this principle is that
lead wires may be attached to the thermocouple without affecting the
accuracy of the measured EMF, provided that the newly formed
junctions are at the same temperature.

The third law, successive or intermediate temperatures, where EMF

E1 is generated when two dissimilar metals have junctions at
temperatures T1 and T2 and EMF E2 results for temperatures T2 and T3.
It follows that an EMF E1 and E2 results at output terminals when the
junctions are at temperatures T1 and T3. This principle makes it
possible for calibration curves derived for a given reference junction
temperature to be used to determine the calibration curves for
another reference temperature