Accelerated mass transfer enhancement by density-driven natural convection

ABSTRACT

The prolonged heat and mass transfer can be enhanced by orders of magnitude that originate from the natural convection. This work examines the mass transfer enhancement in the fluid motion inside a horizontal capillary. In the experimental setup, dye or polystyrene (PS) in aqueous sucrose is taken on one side, and water is on the other side. The main purpose of employing two different systems (i.e. dye and PS) is that it can confirm whether the enhanced mass transfer is with only nanoparticles or it can be possible without nanoparticles in the presence of solute concentration gradients in a fluid. It is demonstrated that the induced flow is due to natural convection attributed to the density-driven flow. The induced flow in the present setup may open up various additional applications for the systems where rapid mixing is important, for instance, rapid formation of drug carriers.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Nanofluids
• nanoparticles
• phoretic motion
• convective mixing
• density-driven flow

Acknowledgements

The author thanks CRNTS, SAIF, and Central Facilities in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay for providing instrumentation and support to characterise the polystyrene. The financial support provided by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, is also gratefully acknowledged. CH also would like to thank Professor P. Sunthar and Dr. Rakhi Dhuriya, in IIT Bombay, for their valuable suggestions to understand various things, such as diffusiophoresis and density-driven flow.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.