High-temperature thermal conductivity measurements of macro-porous graphite

TL;DR

This study develops a finite element modeling methodology to accurately measure the high-temperature thermal conductivity of macro-porous graphite, enabling cost-effective material assessment for industrial applications.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel finite element modeling approach to correct for coating effects in laser flash analysis of porous graphite at high temperatures.

Findings

Low-cost, low-quality graphite has ~10 W/m/K thermal conductivity up to 1000°C.

The developed methodology achieves 8.5% accuracy in thermal diffusivity measurements.

Porous graphite's thermal conductivity is significantly lower than high-quality graphite, impacting high-temperature system design.

Abstract

Graphite is a unique material for high temperature applications and will likely become increasingly important as we attempt to electrify industrial applications. However, high-quality graphite can be expensive, limiting the cost-competitiveness of high-quality graphite technologies. Here, we investigate the thermal properties of low-cost, low-quality, macro-porous graphite to determine the tradeoff between cost and thermal performance. We use laser flash analysis (LFA) to measure the thermal diffusivity of graphite at high temperatures. However, due to the large pores in the graphite samples preventing uniform laser flash heating, we must apply a thick coating to achieve the required flat, parallel surfaces for LFA measurements. The presence of the coating directly impacts the measured diffusivity, not only because of the added thickness but also because of the sample/coating interface profile generated. We therefore develop a methodology based on finite element modeling of a variety of sample/coating interface profiles to extract properties of the sample. Validating the methodology against a reference sample demonstrates a mean absolute percentage error of 8.5%, with potential improvement with better sample characterization. We show low-cost, low-quality graphite has a thermal conductivity of ~10 W/m/K up to 1000$^{\circ}$C, which is an order of magnitude lower than high-quality graphite, but contributions from photon conductivity may result in higher conductivities at higher temperatures. Overall, we demonstrate an approach for measuring thermal properties of macro-porous materials at high temperatures, and apply the approach to measuring thermal conductivity of porous graphite, which will aid in the design of high-temperature systems for cost-competitive decarbonization.