Continuous thermoacoustic mixture separation

Abstract

The superposition of nonzero time-averaged mole flux Ṅ on a thermoacoustic wave in a binary gas mixture in a tube produces continuous mixture separation, in which one or more partially purified product streams are created from a feedstock stream. Significant product and feedstock flows occur through capillaries that are small enough to experience negligible thermoacoustic phenomena of their own. Experiments with a 50–50 helium-argon mixture show diverse consequences of nonzero flow, involving the addition of only one simple term nHṄ to the equation for the heavy component’s time-averaged mole flux, where nH is the mole fraction of the heavy component. A boundary condition for nH must be imposed on the equation wherever products flow out of the separation tube, but not where feedstock flows in.