Thermophysical Properties of Alkali Metal Vapours Part I.A — Prediction and Correlation of Transport Properties for Monatomic Systems

New calculations of the collision integrals for the singlet potential functions involved in the determination of viscosity, thermal conductivity and self‐diffusion coefficients of the monatomic alkali metal vapours are presented. An interpolation procedure for the calculation of the monatomic systems transport coefficients in a large temperature range is provided. This is based on temperature correlations of the collision integrals for the singlet and triplet potential functions. The calculations have been carried out using a new potential function for the ground singlet state of the alkali diatomics. This is a recent version of the Extended Hartree‐Fock Approximate Correlation Energy (EHFACE2U), proposed by Varandas et al., which is believed to give a correct description of the potential energy to vanishing internuclear distances. The results which are compared with previous calculations, are intended to be utilized in Part II of this paper in order to assess available experimental data on the viscosity and thermal conductivity coefficients of the alkali metal vapours.