Volume 40, Issue 4

This study aims to analyze the oxidation of carbon monoxide in moist air from the second thermodynamic law aspect. A mathematical model of laminar premixed flame in a stagnation point flow has been achieved by numerical solution of the boundary layer equation using a self-made code. The chemical kinetic mechanism for flameless combustion of fuel, which is a mixture of carbon monoxide, oxygen, and water vapor, is modeled by 34 elementary reactions that incorporate (09) nine chemical species: CO $\mathrm {CO}$, O$\mathrm {O}$, CO 2 , O 2 , H2O$\mathrm {H}_2\mathrm {O}$, H$\mathrm {H}$, H 2 , HO 2 , and OH $\mathrm {OH}$. The salient point is that for all the parameters we considered, the exergy of the process is completely destroyed by irreversibilities. From the chemical viewpoint, the OH $\mathrm {OH}$ radical plays an essential role in CO $\mathrm {CO}$ oxidation. This latter point has already been mentioned by previous investigators.

In this article, we propose a novel approach to construct macroscopic balance equations and constitutive equations describing various irreversible phenomena. It is based on the general principles of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and consists of four basic steps: picking suitable state variables, choosing a strictly concave entropy function, properly separating entropy fluxes and production rates, and determining a dissipation matrix. Our approach takes advantage of both extended irreversible thermodynamics and GENERIC formalisms and shows a direct correspondence with Levermore's moment-closure hierarchies for the Boltzmann equation. As a direct application, a new ten-moment model beyond the classical hierarchies is constructed and is shown to recover the Euler equations in the equilibrium state. These interesting results may put various macroscopic modeling approaches, starting from the general principles of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, on a solid microscopic foundation based on the Boltzmann equation.

A constitutive function for heat flux in short-fiber-reinforced composites is developed. The fiber orientation distribution is considered using second-order orientation tensor; therefore, the constitutive function for the heat flux will depend on the orientation tensor. The resulting orthotropic equation is discussed also in the context of energy efficiency of buildings.

To improve the efficiency of solar flat-plate collectors further, a study had been carried out wherein the conventional working fluid was replaced by nanofluids. A 25-L/day solar flat-plate water heater with collector area of 0.5 m2$\text{m}^2$ has been designed and fabricated. The thermosyphon system of the solar water heater was monitored at 15 locations using T-type thermocouples. Alumina and CuO nanoparticles were synthesized and characterized using Brunauer–Emmett–Teller and X-ray diffraction techniques and dispersed using ultrasonic mechanism. To stabilize the system at an optimum level, the collector is operated with volume fractions of 0.2% and 0.4% of synthesized Al 2 O 3 and CuO nanoparticles mixed with distilled water and used in the solar flat-plate collector. The temperature profile was compared with different volume fractions of the nanoparticles in the flowing medium. Enhanced heat transfer was observed in the solar flat-plate collector using nanoparticles, and hence, it is inferred that addition of nanoparticles improves the efficiency of the solar water heaters. This paper details the temperature profile observed in the collectors, variation of insolation over the day, and change in efficiency both on the primary side (collector) and on the secondary side (storage tank) of the solar water heater.

We analyze the kinetics of activated processes that take place under far-from-equilibrium conditions, when the system is subjected to external driving forces or gradients or at high values of affinities. We use mesoscopic non-equilibrium thermodynamics to show that when a force is applied, the reaction rate depends on the force. In the case of a chemical reaction at high affinity values, the reaction rate is no longer constant but depends on affinity, which implies that the law of mass action is no longer valid. This result is in good agreement with the kinetic theory of reacting gases, which uses a Chapman–Enskog expansion of the probability distribution.

Fuel cells are known for high efficiencies in converting chemical energy into electrical energy. Nonetheless, the processes taking place in a fuel cell still possess a number of irreversibilities that limit the power output to values below the reversible limit. To analyze these, we developed a model that captures the main irreversibilities occurring inside a proton exchange membrane or polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell. We used the methods of endoreversible thermodynamics, which enable us to study the entropy production of the different sources of irreversibility in detail. Additionally, performance measures like efficiency and power output can be calculated with such a model, and the influence of different parameters, such as temperature and pressure, can be easily investigated. The comparison of the model predictions with realistic fuel cell data shows that the functional dependencies of the fuel cell characteristics can be captured quite well.

A fractional generalized hydrodynamic (GH) model of the longitudinal velocity fluctuations correlation, and its associated memory function, for a complex fluid is analyzed. The adiabatic elimination of fast variables introduces memory effects in the transport equations, and the dynamic of the fluctuations is described by a generalized Langevin equation with long-range noise correlations. These features motivate the introduction of Caputo time fractional derivatives and allows us to calculate analytic expressions for the fractional longitudinal velocity correlation function and its associated memory function. Our analysis eliminates a spurious constant term in the non-fractional memory function found in the non-fractional description. It also produces a significantly slower power-law decay of the memory function in the GH regime that reduces to the well-known exponential decay in the non-fractional Navier–Stokes limit.