The goal purchased in this paper is to implement an experimental bench allowing the measurement of the thermal diffusivity and conductivity of liquids. The principle of the measurement based on a pulsed method is presented. The entire problem is solved through the thermal quadrupoles method. Then, the parameters estimation problem that is specially difficult in this case due to the presence of the walls of the measurement cell is described and an optimal thickness for these walls is defined from a sensitivity study. Finally, we show how it is possible to take into account the radiative transfer within the fluid in the estimation problem, before presenting the set-up and some experimental results. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.