Binary and multicomponent mass transfer at high transfer rates

Abstract

An examination is made as to whether an explicit method can be obtained for calculation of the transfer fluxes of individual species N_i during steady-state diffusion of an ideal gas mixture across a planar film. It is shown that the transfer fluxes can be calculated explicitly, without an iterative procedure, for the following three cases: (i) all cases of binary mass transfer, (ii) multicomponent mass transfer with equal constituent binary pair diffusivities, and (iii) multicomponent mass transfer with small driving forces. It is demonstrated that for the general case of multicomponent mass transfer with high transfer fluxes an iterative procedure is inevitable. An improved iterative procedure for the calculation of N_i is suggested and arguments, including a numerical example, are presented to support it.