Optical sensor for characterizing the phase transition in salted solutions

Abstract

We propose a new optical sensor to characterize the solid-liquid phase transition in salted solutions. The probe mainly consists of a Raman spectrometer that extracts the vibrational properties from the light scattered by the salty medium. The spectrum of the O-H stretching band was shown to be strongly affected by the introduction of NaCl and the temperature change as well. A parameter SD defined as the ratio of the integrated intensities of two parts of this band allows to study the temperature and concentration dependences of the phase transition. Then, an easy and efficient signal processing and the exploitation of a modified Boltzmann equation give information on the phase transition. Validations were done on solutions with varying concentration of NaCl. © 2010 by the authors.