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Scientists at Phase Technology have dedicated
many years of research in the low temperature
phase transition behavior of materials.
Their expertise, in combination with the
latest advances in electronic and cooler
designs, has led to patented technologies that
measure the freezing point of engine coolant
precisely. These unique proprietary
technologies offer distinctive advantages over
other methods in terms of precision, speed,
reliability, compactness and ultra-low sample
temperatures. The net result is the
FPA-70XAF, a compact instrument that
accurately reports the freezing point of
engine coolants. The methodology was
adopted by ASTM D6660 and
specified in coolant specifications for light
and heavy-duty vehicles such as ASTM D3306,
D4985, GM6277M and Ford WSE-M97B44-B.
See ASTM
test methods.
Coolant
manufacturers, packagers, research and
inspection laboratories, government agencies
and many other facilities derive significant
benefits from using Phase Technology's
freezing point analyzers. In comparison
with the manual D1177 method, the analysis
time of the new method is reduced to a few
minutes while precision is significantly
improved.
Freezing Point of Engine Coolants
 Freezing
point is a thermodynamic property. For a
multi-component system, the equilibrium
temperature at which crystals form upon
cooling is identical to the temperature at
which the crystals melt upon warming.
Therefore, the freezing point can be measured
by either one of the two approaches.
The cooling approach often suffers from
supercooling when the sample fails to nucleate
at the freezing point. This problem is
mitigated to some extent by a seeding
technique, which can be quite tedious. With
the warming approach, the supercooling problem
does not have an impact on the detection of
the melting temperature. However, certain
amount of care is needed to ensure that
sufficient time is allowed for melting to
occur. The warming approach is used in
D6660, which
provides freezing points that are
equivalent to the manual ASTM D-1177 method.
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