Assessment of Methods for Determining the Impurity Concentration in Mercury Cells

The uncertainty arising from chemical impurities is the principle contribution in the uncertainty budget of primary level temperature measurements. Impurities in any substance generally decrease the freezing (or triple) point temperature of a substance, and their influence is governed primarily by their behavior at low concentrations in the host material. The depression in temperature due to impurities is theoretically expressed by Raoult's law which, at final analysis, expresses the linearity between Delta T (T (observed)-T (pure)) and the inverse of the melted fraction (1/F). Recently, TUBITAK UME carried out a new project on the construction of new reference mercury fixed-point cells. Within the scope of this study, three different sets of mercury cells with different purity values were fabricated. Three methods were employed to assess the impurity concentration in the cells. The first method is known as the mole fraction sum of impurity components, and the chemical assays form the basis for this kind of assessment. The second method of evaluation is based on a 1/F versus Delta T curve, and the slope values obtained from these curves are important. The final method is to directly compare the new cells with a national (or reference) standard mercury cell. The results obtained from three methods of evaluation showed consistency in terms of qualitative analysis.