Characterization of the hydrodynamics inside a practical cell with a rotating disk electrode

Abstract

Nowadays, the preferred devices to characterize electrochemical reactions are cells with a rotating disk electrode and by virtue of its advantages these devices are being employed to face non-traditional problems. In this system, simple analytical expressions can be used to interpret the information obtained from physical experiments. These equations assume that the velocity field near the electrode active face is in accordance with the ideal behavior described by von Kármán. In this work, the flow pattern inside the electrochemical cell is numerically reproduced by using fully three-dimensional models with one-phase and two-phases. Multiple electrode rotation speeds and several cell sizes were analyzed. It was obtained that the flow pattern inside the electrochemical cell is not symmetric and by comparing with previous works, it was shown that the liquid flow pattern around the electrode was incorrectly interpreted. This work shows the way that the differences between actual and the ideal flow patterns can be taken into account in the Levich equation.