Axial diffusion effect on concentration dispersion

Abstract

This work presents an analytical attempt to illustrate the effect of axial diffusion on concentration dispersion in packed tube flows. The concentration moment method is applied to derive the analytical solution for time-dependent Taylor dispersion coefficient. With the increase in the packing parameter α as a damping factor, the concentration dispersion is characterized by three modes: (I) the shear-induced dispersion dominated mode, with dispersion coefficient determined by α; (II) the transition mode; and (III) the diffusion dominated mode, with dispersion coefficient determined by Péclet number Pe. In contrast to the usually negligible effects of axial diffusion for dispersion in pure fluid flows even at a relatively small Pe, axial diffusion with typical α plays an important role for packed media flows even with large Pe.