Fuel 79 (2000) 1279–1280

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Letter to the Editor

Response to “Letter to the Editor” by Stubington as was suggested by Stubington [1]. The assumption that the
rate of heat transfer reduces with cross-sectional area may
Dear Sir, be true, however the thermal inertia of the thermocouple
In his Letter to the Editor [1], Stubington argues that also decreases which must be accounted for. Note that the
extrapolation of the conclusions of the above communi- heat conduction in question is an unsteady state case. There-
cation [2] to his earlier work [3] is not justified as the earlier fore if we consider Eq. (2) which describes the heating rate
work used a smaller diameter thermocouple (0.5 mm) than of the thermocouple in response to a heating source, Q:
that (1 mm) used by the present authors [2]. It is argued that DT
the reduction in heat conduction along the thermocouple rC p V ˆQ …2†
Dt
due to the smaller diameter results in minimal impact on
the measured temperature response. The measured data then Eqs. (1) and (2) can be combined to yield:
were compared with model predictions similar to those of DT
Heidenreich and Zhang [2], with the measured temperature DT kA
ˆ Dx …3†
response showing a marked deviation from the predicted Dt rCp V
response particularly for temperatures greater than 5008C.
The measured data showed no reduction in the heating rate The volume of the thermocouple of concern, being that
as the centre temperature approaches the bed temperature as within the particle, can be approximated by:
would be expected when the driving force for thermal V ˆ ADx …4†
conduction within the particle decreases. In fact, the data
seems to show a slight increase in the heating rate in this Eq. (4) can be substituted into Eq. (3) to yield:
region, which is not expected, and suggests that there may DT kDT
ˆ …5†
be thermal effects occurring, which are compromising the Dt rCp Dx2
measurements.
If we consider, the assumption that the rate of heat trans- So as can be seen, to minimise the rate at which the thermo-
fer along the thermocouple is approximated by: couple sheath temperature is influenced by thermal conduc-
tion, the immersion depth (Dx) must be increased which was
DT effectively achieved by Heidenreich and Zhang [2] via the
Q ˆ kA …1† use of multiple particles on the tip of the thermocouple. The
Dx

Fig. 1. Measured temperature response at the centre of 211 1 10 mm Bowmans coal particles in the horizontal tube furnace at 6008C. Data were obtained
using the one particle bare thermocouple wire with the water-cooling technique [4], the one particle and water-cooled probe (sheathed thermocouple) technique
[2], and the conventional technique [3].

0016-2361/00/$ - see front matter q 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
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1280 C. Heidenreich, D.-K. Zhang / Fuel 79 (2000) 1279–1280

effect of the smaller cross-sectional area for thermal References

conduction is offset by the corresponding reduction in the
thermal inertia of the thermocouple. [1] Stubington JF. Letter to the Editor. Fuel 2000;79:1277–8.
The application of finer wires for measuring the tempera- [2] Heidenreich CA, Zhang DK. Fuel 1999;78:991–4.
[3] Stubington JF. Sumaryono. Fuel 1984;63:1013–9.
ture response was experimentally investigated by Heiden- [4] Heidenreich CA. PhD thesis. The University of Adelaide, 1999.
reich [4], using bare thermocouple wires (0.2 mm) inserted
into a wet coal particle heated in the horizontal tube furnace. C. Heidenreich a
The wires were arranged such that the positive and negative D.-K. Zhang b,*
wires entered opposite sides of the coal particle with the a
Environmental Engineering Division,
junction placed centrally, and the wires were passed through Agricultural Machinery Research and Design Centre,
a water-cooled probe to minimise any excessive conduction The University of South Australia,
effects and to protect the wires in general. Fig. 1 shows the Adelaide, SA 5095, Australia
results obtained, and compares them with measurements b
Curtin University of Technology,
obtained using the conventional measurement technique School of Chemical Engineering,
[3] and using the water-cooled probe in conjunction with G.P.O. Box U1987,
a standard thermocouple. It can be seen that the measured Perth, WA 6845, Australia
temperature response using the bare thermocouple wires in E-mail address: dkzhang@che.curtin.edu.au
conjunction with the water cooled probe does not differ
significantly from that obtained using the standard thermo- Received 18 November 1999
couple and the water cooled probe. Again this confirms that
the immersion depth rather then the thermocouple diameter
will be the most critical factor in affecting the rate of
thermal conduction along the thermocouple.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 161-8-9266-7581; fax: 161-8-9266-3554.