Dispersion of reactive species with reversible and irreversible wall reactions

Abstract

The longitudinal dispersion of a chemical species released in an oscillatory flow through an annular tube has been studied in presence of two kinds of first order reactions between the species and tube-wall. The species is supposed to undergo kinetic reversible phase exchange with the outer-wall material and irreversible absorption into the wall. Due to the variation of velocity across the tube section, the chemical species may spread out axially along the tube at a much faster rate than that produced by the molecular diffusion. A finite-difference implicit scheme has been adopted to solve the unsteady convection-diffusion equation for all time period based on the Aris method of moments. Axial distributions of mean concentration are determined from the first four central moments using Hermite polynomial representation for the periodic flow with and without non-zero mean flow. The study brings forward the coupled effects of reversible phase exchange and irreversible absorption on dispersion coefficient. Both the reversible and irreversible reactions are found to inhabit the dispersion process at early times, but at developed stage dispersion may be enhanced by the reversible phase exchange, provided the velocity comprises time invariant component. The decrease of peak of the mean concentration distribution with the increase of reaction rate is found irrespective of the nature of reaction.