The acquisition and transfer of knowledge of electrokinetic-hydrodynamics (EKHD) fundamentals: an introductory graduate-level course

ABSTRACT

Relevant engineering applications, such as bioseparation of proteins and DNA, soil-cleaning, motion of colloidal particles in different media, electrical field-based cancer treatments, and the cleaning of surfaces and coating flows, belongs to the family of ‘Applied Field Sensitive Process Technologies’ requiring an external field to move solutes in a fluid within a fibrous (or porous) domain. This field incorporates an additional variable that makes the analysis very challenging and can create for the student a number of new problems to solve. A graduate-level course, based on active-learning approaches and High Performance Learning Environments, where transfer of knowledge plays a key role, was designed by the Chemical Engineering Department at Tennessee Technological University. This course, where the fundamentals principles of EKHD were taught to science, engineering and technology students was designed by the Chemical Engineering Department at the Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN. An important number of these students were able to grasp the tools required to advance their research projects that led to numerous technical presentations in professional society meetings and publications in peered-reviewed journals.

KEYWORDS:

• Electrokinetic-hydrodynamics
• engineering education
• active-learning
• integrative approach
• High Performance Learning Environments

Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful for the feedback received from Dr. Sharon Sauer of the Chemical Engineering Department at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, IN.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Pascal is an Assistant Professor of the Chemical Engineering Department at Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN. She received her BS in Chemical Engineering from Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN; her PhD in Engineering from Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN; and she was a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Academic Science Education and Research Training (ASERT) Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of New Mexico (UNM). Her research focuses on mathematical/computational modelling of drug delivery to tumours enhanced by applied electrical fields. Specifically, she studies the effect of tumour vasculature morphology and effect of alternating applied electrical fields on drug transport and tumour cell death.

Rocio Tijaro-Rojas is an Assistant Professor of the Environmental Engineering Department at Universidad Arturo Prat (Chile) since 2003. She received her BS in Fishing Engineering from Universidad del Magdalena (Colombia), her Master of Science in Environmental Economics from Universidad de Concepcion (Chile) and she received a PhD degree in Engineering at Tennessee Tech University. Her area of research is focused on modelling of environmental pollution. She has also been involved in Engineering Education topics as part of her academic training during her doctoral studies.

Mario Oyanader is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at California Baptist University, Riverside, CA. He received his BS in Civil & ChE from UCN, MSc in Information Systems from Hawaii Pacific University and PhD in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Florida State University. He has devoted himself to teach ChE principles to solve environmental problems and has developed a strong background of contributions in environmental applications. He currently lectures on the transport phenomena series, process design and process modelling & control.

Pedro E. Arce is a Professor and Chair of the Chemical Engineering Department at Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN. He graduated with a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Santa Fe, Argentina and has a Master of Science and a PhD Degree from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, both in Chemical Engineering. His areas of research involved advance oxidation, electrokinetics applications to soft material design, separations, and soil cleaning, and advanced material for electrochemical applications. He has a lifelong interest in engineering education and has received numerous awards in education, scholarship, and leadership based on outstanding contributions he has made.

Notes

1 The term ‘EKHD’ parallels names related to situations with other applied fields, such as ‘magneto-hydrodynamics’, used previously in the literature (Moffatt 1989); ‘radiation-hydrodynamics’ (Chandrasekhar and Gills 1962); and others with special needs, i.e. ‘micro-hydrodynamics’ (Batchelor 1954). A need for a systematisation of the subject was recently recognised (Saville 1980).

2 One of the authors (PA) benefited greatly from conversations and discussion with Professor Raj Rajagopalan (NUS, Chemical Engineering) on this subject.

3 PA is indebted to Professor Ronald Pethig of Wales University for the reference to this powerful learning principle.

4 Perhaps, the term ‘Low Field EKHD’ could be appropriate here to parallel other terms used previously by Happel and Brenner (1983) to identify situations without electrical field applications.

5 This is usually handled by either individual projects or the assignation of selected articles to the interested student/s and then ask them to discuss the finding.

6 This is the free charge force and it is the dominant one when the fluid is electrically homogeneous (Woodson and Melcher 1968).

7 The actual computation of u_A will require the solution of the ‘fluid problem’ around the particle and taking into account its EDL (see Section 3.3.4).

8 Other authors include, by generalisation, the electro-convective term, V C_A, as part of the Nernst–Planck equation.

9 D_eff here is viewed as a scaled-up coefficient and not as the term identified usually in electrochemical textbooks (see, for example, Newman and Thomas-Alyea 2012).

10 This can be accomplished by assigning student the reading (and then having a discussion) of key articles such as those cited in this section.

Additional information

Funding

The second author was supported by the National Science and Technology Agency (CONICYT) of Chile under the Formation of Advanced Human Capital Program, and the Environmental Engineering Department at Universidad Arturo Prat (Chile) as part of the Professional Development Program.