A computer code for solving the equations of mass diffusion has been developed and applied to study the molecular-level mixing between two fluids inside a pipe. First, one fluid occupies the entire volume within the pipe, and then a second miscible fluid is forced into the pipe, developing a mixing process through the interface between the fluids. This phenomenon occurs as the combination of molecular diffusion, variation of velocity over the cross-section and turbulence. The code developed for this study is based on the finite element method for domain discretization and standard finite difference schemes for temporal discretization. Comparison with experimental data shows that the code is able to reproduce the physical trends and gives good predictions for engineering applications. A grid independence analysis is presented for all computations.

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