CL-305: Transport Phenomena

Introduction and Basic Concepts

Prof. Nanda Kishore

Department of Chemical Engineering
IIT Guwahati, Assam – 781039, INDIA
 Introduction
• Transport phenomena include
• Transport of momentum
• Transport of energy
• Transport of chemical species
• Why they should be studied together?
• Often occur simultaneously
• Mathematical approaches
• Describing governing equations
• Solving their governing equations
• Molecular mechanisms
• Knowledge of transport phenomena is very essential for
• design and controlling of operating conditions of unit operations and unit processes
• A few examples include:
• Flow through pipes
• Flow of and heat transfer from cylinders and spheres to fluids
• Diffusion of species from falling film
• Evaporation of column of a liquid
• Boundary layer flows past flat plates and associate heat/mass transfer to surrounding
fluids
• …. so on
Transport phenomena at different levels
• Macroscopic level
• Develop equations called macroscopic level balances
• Concerned with the quantities or properties at the entry and exit points
• Not considered details of what is happening inside the system
• Length scale: order of centimetre or meter
• Microscopic level
• Interior details of system is assessed,
• i.e., what is happening to fluid mixture in small region within the equipment
• Develop equations of change for
• mass, momentum and energy within the small region
• Length scale: order of micron to centimetre
• Molecular level:
• Fundamental understanding in terms of molecular structure and interaction forces
• Theoretical physicist or physical chemists are interested in such details
• Length scale: 1 to 1000 nm
• At all three levels of description,
• Conservation laws play a key role
• In this course, transport phenomena of Newtonian fluids
• At microscopic level is considered where continuum hypothesis is valid without any
restriction
• Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer of Newtonian Fluids
• With or without reactions
• Play vital role in design and/or controlling operating conditions of aforementioned
industrial settings.
• A priori information about the performance of these fluids in variety of
industrial settings can be achieved
• Transport phenomena include three closely related topics
• Transport of momentum (Fluid Mechanics)
• Transport of energy (Heat Transfer)
• Transport of various chemical species (Mass Transfer)
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• Why these three transport phenomena should be studied
together?
• Often they occur simultaneously – in fact, existence of any one
transport process alone in a given application is an exception rather rule
• Governing equations describing three transport phenomena are closely
related
• Mathematical approaches for describing these processes and solving
their governing equations are similar
• Molecular mechanisms of these transport phenomena are very closely
related
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• In this course, transport phenomena at microscopic level is
considered where
• Continuum hypothesis is valid without any restriction
• Thus, it would be helpful to discuss a few basic but very
important concepts of transport phenomena such as
• Continuum hypothesis
• Transport mechanisms
• Constitutive equations of transport by molecular mechanism
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 Continuum hypothesis
• Physical properties are assumed to be distributed throughout the space
• Physical properties such as velocity, temperature, pressure, density, stress, electric field
strength, etc.
• Every point in space has finite values for such properties
• From one point to the next point, the properties may change value and there
may even be surfaces where properties jump discontinuously
• However, continuum assumption does not allow properties to become
infinite or to be undefined at any single isolated point

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 Precisely continuum hypothesis states
• Region in which physical properties to be described can be
subdivided into a set of (infinitesimal) volume elements, each
of which simultaneously be following below points
• Each volume element should be small enough so that the
properties are uniform
• i.e., any spatial variations in properties inside the volume element are
negligible
• Each volume element should be large enough to contain a
statistically large number of molecules so that local
thermodynamic equilibrium maintained
• i.e., ensuring infinite no. of collisions amongst molecules to establish local
thermodynamic equilibrium
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• Continuum hypothesis holds well provided all dimensions of system are
large compared to molecular size
• An example of its violation is flow of gases in small pores  Knudsen diffusion
• Basic problem in continuum mechanics is to describe the response of
material to stress
• A qualitative statement of that response is known as constitutive equation,
i.e., a model which describes how a material will respond to stress

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 Transport mechanisms
• If temperature or chemical concentration in any material are perturbed so
that they become non-uniform, the gradients tend to disappear over time
• Same is true for velocity variations within a fluid
• Spontaneous dissipation of such gradients is a fundamental and far-reaching
observation
• In other words, the energy, concentration of material and momentum of a
fluid stream tend to move from regions of higher to lower intensity levels

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• Fluxes of those quantities (energy, concentration and momentum) each
have two contributions
• Convective transport which accompanies any bulk motion
• Molecular or diffusive transport which originates from intermolecular forces and
relative motion of molecules
• Convection part can be described in a general manner but molecular part of
transport processes are specific to a given material or a class of materials
• Thus the constitutive equations relate molecular fluxes to material
properties and the gradients of temperature, concentration and velocity

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 Constitutive equations of transport
by molecular mechanisms
Heat Conduction
• According to Fourier’s law, heat flux (energy per unit cross section area)
vector is proportional to temperature gradient as given below

q  kT  (1)
• Where k is thermal conductivity
• In a moving fluid, heat flux vector represents energy transport relative to
mass-average velocity
(because energy flux relative to fixed coordinates has convective contribution as
well)
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• In eq. 1, k has no preferred direction whereas the flux has the same
direction as that of temperature gradient
• Materials obey above point (which include most solids and almost all fluids) are
isotropic
• Materials that are anisotropic have an internal structure that makes thermal
conductivity depend on direction
• For anisotropic materials, in eq. 1, the scalar conductivity must be replaced
by a conductivity
 tensor such that

q  k  T  (2)
• In such anisotropic materials, the directions of heat flux and temperature
gradient differ from each other
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Species diffusion
• According to Fick’s law, the mass flux of a species “A” relative to its mass
average velocity is proportional to its concentration gradient

j A   DAB wA   DAB wA    DAB C A

• Where DAB is the diffusivity of A into B
• ρ is density of binary mixture
• wA is the mass fraction of A in the binary mixture
• CA is the concentration of species A
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 Stress and momentum flux
• Local rates of momentum transfer in a fluid are determined by stresses
• Consider a point within a fluid through which
 an imaginary surface having
an orientation is described by unit normal n
 
• Stress at that point (w.r.t. orientation of test surface) is given by stress vector S n 

n  
S n 

• This stress is defined asthe force per unit area on the test surface exerted by
the fluid toward which n points
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• This stress vector has two components: normal (sn) and tangential (s1, s2) to
the surface sn 
n  
s1 S n 
s2

• Normal component represents a normal stress or pressure on the surface

whereas the tangential components are shear stresses
• This stress vector is relatedto stress tensor(σ) by
  
S (n )  n  
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  ij   p ij   ij where  ij  0 if i  j
 1 if i  j

• In Cartesian coordinates
 xx  xy  xz   p   xx  xy  xz 
    
   yx  yy  yz     yx  p   yy  yz 
 zx  zy  zz    zx  zy  p   zz 
  

• For example, σxy is the force per unit area on a plane perpendicular to y
axis; acting in x-direction and exerted by fluid at greater y
• σij has three parts
• j  specify a reference plane
• i  direction in which it is acting
• and a sign convention
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• Stress may be interpreted as momentum flux in the case of fluids
• The part of stress caused solely by fluid motion is termed as viscous stress
• This viscous stress contribution to stress tensor is denoted by τ
• For Newtonian fluids with constant  density, viscous stress is related to local
 
velocity gradient     v  v  T

• Where μ is viscosity of the fluid


• v is velocity gradient

• v T is transpose of velocity gradient
dv x
• For a unidirectional flow with v = vx(y)  yx  
dy
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 By analogy
dT d C T  k
q  k   where α 
p

dy dy ρC p
j A   DAB wA   DAB wA    DAB C A
dv x d v x  
 yx     where  
dy dy 

α, DAB and ϑ are by analogy indicate thermal diffusivity, binary

molecular diffusivity and kinematic viscosity respectively
 all having units of m2/s
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• Their ratios provide comparison of intrinsic rates of different transport processes if more
than one transport is occurring simultaneously
• Rate of viscous momentum transfer relative to heat conduction is Prandtl number

Pr  
 

C p
 k C P  k
• Rate of viscous momentum transfer relative to species diffusion is Schmidt number
 
Sc  
DAB DAB
• Ratio of diffusivities that arises in the analysis of simultaneous heat and mass transfer is
Lewis number  k Sc
Le   
DAB C p DAB Pr
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 References
• W. M.Deen, Analysis of Transport Phenomena, Oxford University Press,
New York, 1998 (First Indian Edition, 2008).
• R.L. Panton, Incompressible Flow, Wiley India, 2011 (Third Edition)
• B. R. Bird, E. W. Stewart and N. E. Lightfoot, Transport Phenomena, 2nd
Ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2003
• R.P. Chhabra and J.F. Richardson, Non-Newtonian Flow and Applied Rheology, 2nd
Edition, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, UK, 2008.
• H.A. Barnes, J.F. Hutton and K. Walters, An Introduction to Rheology,
Elsevier, Netherlands, 1993 (Third Impression)
• Christopher W. Macosko, Rheology: Principles, Measurements, and Applications,
Wiley-VCH, New York, 1994.
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