Numerical Modelling of Mass Transfer Through Micro and Nano Capillaries

Multicomponent mass transport in the micro/nano scale is one of the most important phenomena in many engineering processes such as fuel cells. Therefore, a through understanding of the underlying physics and modeling techniques for mass transport is of crucial importance. According to Kerkhof et al. [1], due to the approximations made in the derivation of the classic transport equations for diffusion-convective dominated problems, the commonly used approach of modeling these problems by the Maxwell-Stefan and Navier-Stokes equations results in trends that are contrary to experiments even for elementary problems like gaseous counter diffusion in capillaries. A new formulation to model molecular fluid transport in multi component systems is then presented. The main aim of this study is to develop a combined experimental-numerical program to study the validity of the classical and the proposed formulations. We discuss the development of an in-house written C/C++ Object Oriented program that solves the classical and recently presented formulation numerically.