Study of the Feasibility of a Technique for Determining the Impurity Content of Liquid Alkali Metals

摘要

An investigation is made of a technique which shows promise of being capable of identifying and measuring oxygen impurities in alkali metal systems at concentrations as low as 10 parts per million. Specifically, the influences of oxygen impurities on the freezing points of potassium, rubidium, and cesium have been studied theoretically and related to existing experimental data. This report presents a theoretically developed correlation that relates freezing-point depression to oxygen content in these metals and the supporting experimental data. An apparatus, which incorporates features for accurately measuring oxygen impurities in cesium, rubidium, and potassium by a freezing-point technique, is described along with the essential operating procedures.