Diffusion equation concentrations

Two applications of the flucUiathig diffusion equation are made here to illustrate tlie additional infonnation the flucUiations provide over and beyond the detenninistic behaviour. Consider an infinite volume with an initial concentration, c, that is constant, Cq, everywhere. The solution to the averaged diffusion equation is then simply (c) = Cq for all t. However, the two-time correlation fiinction may be shown [26] to be... 

If tire diffusion coefficient is independent of tire concentration, equation (C2.1.22) reduces to tire usual fonn of Pick s second law. Analytical solutions to diffusion equations for several types of boundary conditions have been derived [M]- In tlie particular situation of a steady state, tire flux is constant. Using Henry s law (c = kp) to relate tire concentration on both sides of tire membrane to tire partial pressure, tire constant flux can be written as... 

Most of our ideas about carrier transport in semiconductors are based on tire assumption of diffusive motion. Wlren tire electron concentration in a semiconductor is not unifonn, tire electrons move diffuse) under tire influence of concentration gradients, giving rise to an additional contribution to tire current. In tliis motion, electrons also undergo collisions and tlieir temporal and spatial distributions are described by the diffusion equation. The... 

Thus far we have considered systems where stirring ensured homogeneity witliin tire medium. If molecular diffusion is tire only mechanism for mixing tire chemical species tlien one must adopt a local description where time-dependent concentrations, c r,f), are defined at each point r in space and tire evolution of tliese local concentrations is given by a reaction-diffusion equation... 

Diffusion and Mass Transfer During Leaching. Rates of extraction from individual particles are difficult to assess because it is impossible to define the shapes of the pores or channels through which mass transfer (qv) has to take place. However, the nature of the diffusional process in a porous soHd could be illustrated by considering the diffusion of solute through a pore. This is described mathematically by the diffusion equation, the solutions of which indicate that the concentration in the pore would be expected to decrease according to an exponential decay function. 

When electrons are injected as minority carriers into a -type semiconductor they may diffuse, drift, or disappear. That is, their electrical behavior is determined by diffusion in concentration gradients, drift in electric fields (potential gradients), or disappearance through recombination with majority carrier holes. Thus, the transport behavior of minority carriers can be described by a continuity equation. To derive the p—n junction equation, steady-state is assumed, so that = 0, and a neutral region outside the depletion region is assumed, so that the electric field is zero. Under these circumstances,... 

Eor a food container, the amount of sorption could be estimated in the following way. Eor simple diffusion the concentration in the polymer at the food surface could be estimated with equation 3. This would require a knowledge of the partial pressure of the flavor in the food. This is not always available, but methods exist for estimating this when the food matrix is water-dorninated. The concentration in the polymer at the depth of penetration is zero. Hence the average concentration C is as from equation 9. 

Caldwell and Babb used virtually the same equation to evaluate the mutual diffusivity for concentrated mixtures of common liquids. 

Diffusion equations mav also be used to study vapor diffusion in porous materi s. It should be clear that aU estimates based on relationships that assume constant diffusivity are approximations. Liquid diffusivity in sohds usually decreases with moisture concentration. Liquid and vapor diffusivity also change, and material shrinks during diying. 

Salt flux across a membrane is due to effects coupled to water transport, usually negligible, and diffusion across the membrane. Eq. (22-60) describes the basic diffusion equation for solute passage. It is independent of pressure, so as AP — AH 0, rejection 0. This important factor is due to the kinetic nature of the separation. Salt passage through the membrane is concentration dependent. Water passage is dependent on P — H. Therefore, when the membrane is operating near the osmotic pressure of the feed, the salt passage is not diluted by much permeate water. 

In the kinetics of formation of carbides by reaction of the metal widr CH4, the diffusion equation is solved for the general case where carbon is dissolved into tire metal forming a solid solution, until the concentration at the surface reaches saturation, when a solid carbide phase begins to develop on the free surface. If tire carbide has a tirickness at a given instant and the diffusion coefficient of carbon is D in the metal and D in the carbide. Pick s 2nd law may be written in the form (Figure 8.1)... 

It is known that the vertical distribution of diffusing particles from an elevated point source is a function of the standard deviation of the vertical wind direction at the release point. The standard deviations of the vertical and horizontal wind directions are related to the standard deviations of particle concentrations in the vertical and horizontal directions within the plume itself. This is equivalent to saying that fluctuations in stack top conditions control the distribution of pollutant in the plume. Furthermore, it is known that the plume pollutant distributions follow a familiar Gaussian diffusion equation. 

From this consideration one can derive the macroscopic diffusion equation for the concentration c(x, t) of the chemical component as... 

Actually, this is not really diffusion-XimiiQd, but rather Laplacian growth, since the macroscopic equation describing the process, apart from fluctuations, is not a diffusion equation but a Laplacian equation. There are some crucial differences, which will become clearer below. In some sense DLA is diffusion-limited aggregation in the limit of zero concentration of the concentration field at infinity. 

For an ideal gas, the total molar concentration Cj is constant at a given total pressure P and temperature T. This approximation holds quite well for real gases and vapours, except at high pressures. For a liquid however, CT may show considerable variations as the concentrations of the components change and, in practice, the total mass concentration (density p of the mixture) is much more nearly constant. Thus for a mixture of ethanol and water for example, the mass density will range from about 790 to 1000 kg/m3 whereas the molar density will range from about 17 to 56 kmol/m3. For this reason the diffusion equations are frequently written in the form of a mass flux JA (mass/area x time) and the concentration gradients in terms of mass concentrations, such as cA. 

Liquid phase diffusivities are strongly dependent on the concentration of the diffusing component which is in strong contrast to gas phase diffusivities which are substantially independent of concentration. Values of liquid phase diffusivities which are normally quoted apply to very dilute concentrations of the diffusing component, the only condition under which analytical solutions can be produced for the diffusion equations. For this reason, only dilute solutions are considered here, and in these circumstances no serious error is involved in using Fick s first and second laws expressed in molar units. 

Then the diffusion equation for the fluctuation of the metal ion concentration is given by Eq. (68), and the mass balance at the film/solution interface is expressed by Eq. (69). These fluctuation equations are also solved with the same boundary condition as shown in Eq. (70). 

To account for molecular diffusion, Equation (8.2), which governs reactant concentrations along the streamlines, must be modihed to allow diffusion between the streamlines i.e., in the radial direction. We ignore axial diffusion but add a radial diffusion term to obtain... 

Similar convection-diffusion equations to the Navier-Stokes equation can be formulated for enthalpy or species concentration. In all of these formulations there is always a superposition of diffusive and convective transport of a field quantity, supplemented by source terms describing creation or destruction of the transported quantity. There are two fundamental assumptions on which the Navier-Stokes and other convection-diffusion equations are based. The first and most fundamental is the continuum hypothesis it is assumed that the fluid can be described by a scalar or vector field, such as density or velocity. In fact, the field quantities have to be regarded as local averages over a large number of particles contained in a volume element embracing the point of interest. The second hypothesis relates to the local statistical distribution of the particles in phase space the standard convection-diffusion equations rely on the assumption of local thermal equilibrium. For gas flow, this means that a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution is assumed for the velocity of the particles in the frame-of-reference co-moving with the fluid. Especially the second assumption may break dovm when gas flow at high temperature or low pressure in micro channels is considered, as will be discussed below. 

The strategies discussed in the previous chapter are generally applicable to convection-diffusion equations such as Eq. (32). If the function O is a component of the velocity field, the incompressible Navier-Stokes equation, a non-linear partial differential equation, is obtained. This stands in contrast to O representing a temperature or concentration field. In these cases the velocity field is assumed as given, and only a linear partial differential equation has to be solved. The non-linear nature of the Navier-Stokes equation introduces some additional problems, for which special solution strategies exist. Corresponding numerical techniques are the subject of this section. 

The development of the theory of solute diffusion in soils was largely due to the work of Nye and his coworkers in the late sixties and early seventies, culminating in their essential reference work (5). They adapted the Fickian diffusion equations to describe diffusion in a heterogeneous porous medium. Pick s law describes the relationship between the flux of a solute (mass per unit surface area per unit time, Ji) and the concentration gradient driving the flux. In vector terms. 

Therefore if the carbon substrate is present at sufficiently high concentration anywhere in the rhizosphere (i.e., p p, ax), the microbial biomass will increase exponentially. Most models have considered the microbes to be immobile and so Eq. (33) can be solved independently for each position in the rhizosphere provided the substrate concentration is known. This, in turn, is simulated by treating substrate-carbon as the diffusing solute in Eq. (32). The substrate consumption by microorganisms is considered as a sink term in the diffusion equation, Eq. (8). 

Biofilms adhere to surfaces, hence in nearly all systems of interest, whether a medical device or geological media, transport of mass from bulk fluid to the biofilm-fluid interface is impacted by the velocity field [24, 25]. Coupling of the velocity field to mass transport is a fundamental aspect of mass conservation [2]. The concentration of a species c(r,t) satisfies the advection diffusion equation... 

As a last example in this section, let us consider a sphere situated in a solution extending to infinity in all directions. If the concentration at the surface of the sphere is maintained constant (for example c — 0) while the initial concentration of the solution is different (for example c = c°), then this represents a model of spherical diffusion. It is preferable to express the Laplace operator in the diffusion equation (2.5.1) in spherical coordinates for the centro-symmetrical case.t The resulting partial differential equation... 

Permeability of an FML is evaluated using the Water Vapor Transmission test.28 A sample of the membrane is placed on top of a small aluminum cup containing a small amount of water. The cup is then placed in a controlled humidity and temperature chamber. The humidity in the chamber is typically 20% relative humidity, while the humidity in the cup is 100%. Thus, a concentration gradient is set up across the membrane. Moisture diffuses through the membrane, and with time the liquid level in the cup is reduced. The rate at which moisture is moving through the membrane is measured. From that rate, the permeability of the membrane is calculated with the simple diffusion equation (Fick s first law). It is important to remember that even if a liner is installed correctly with no holes, penetrations, punctures, or defects, liquid will still diffuse through the membrane. 

The basic theory of mass transfer to a RHSE is similar to that of a RDE. In laminar flow, the limiting current densities on both electrodes are proportional to the square-root of rotational speed they differ only in the numerical values of a proportional constant in the mass transfer equations. Thus, the methods of application of a RHSE for electrochemical studies are identical to those of the RDE. The basic procedure involves a potential sweep measurement to determine a series of current density vs. electrode potential curves at various rotational speeds. The portion of the curves in the limiting current regime where the current is independent of the potential, may be used to determine the diffusivity or concentration of a diffusing ion in the electrolyte. The current-potential curves below the limiting current potentials are used for evaluating kinetic information of the electrode reaction. 

In the previous section, we detailed diffusion equations and generalized mass balance equations. We now turn to their practical uses in the pharmaceutical sciences. Mass transport problems can be classified as steady or unsteady. In steady mass transport there is no change of concentration with time [3], characterized mathematically by... 

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