Volume 41, Issue 3 -

The Soret effect describes diffusive motion that originates from a temperature gradient. It is observed in mixtures of gases, liquids and even solids. Although there is a formal phenomenological description based on linear nonequilibrium thermodynamics, the Soret effect is a multicause phenomenon and there is no univocal microscopic picture. After a brief historical overview and an outline of the fundamental thermodynamic concepts, this review focuses on thermodiffusion in binary and ternary liquid mixtures. The most important experimental techniques used nowadays are introduced. Then, a modern development in studying thermal diffusion, the discovery of both integral and specific additivity laws, is discussed. The former relate to the general behavior of the substances in a temperature field according to their thermophobicities, which prove to be pure component properties. The thermophobicities allow for a convenient classification of the phenomenon, a simple interpretation and a proper estimation and prediction of the thermodiffusion parameters. The specific laws relate to the additivity of the particular contributions. Among the latter, we discuss the isotopic Soret effect and the so-called chemical contribution. From the theoretical side, there are kinetic and thermodynamic theories, and the nature of the driving forces of thermodiffusion can be either of volume or surface type. Besides analytical models, computer simulations become increasingly important. Polymer solutions are special as they represent highly asymmetric molecular systems with a molar mass-independent thermophoretic mobility. Its origin is still under debate, and draining and non-draining models are presently discussed. Finally, some discussion is devoted to ternary mixtures, which only recently have been investigated in more detail.

For biomolecules and cell particles purification and separation in biological engineering, besides the chromatography as mostly applied process, aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS) are of the most favorable separation processes that are worth to be investigated in thermodynamic theoretically. In recent years, thermodynamic calculation of ATPS properties has attracted much attention due to their great applications in chemical industries such as separation processes. These phase calculations of ATPS have inherent complexity due to the presence of ions and polymers in aqueous solution. In this work, for target ternary systems of polyethylene glycol (PEG4000)–salt–water, thermodynamic investigation for constituent systems with three salts (NaCl, KCl and LiCl) has been carried out as PEG is the most favorable polymer in ATPS. The modified perturbed hard sphere chain (PHSC) equation of state (EOS), extended Debye–Hückel and Pitzer models were employed for calculation of activity coefficients for the considered systems. Four additional statistical parameters were considered to ensure the consistency of correlations and introduced as objective functions in the particle swarm optimization algorithm. The results showed desirable agreement to the available experimental data, and the order of recommendation of studied models is PHSC EOS > extended Debye–Hückel > Pitzer. The concluding remark is that the all the employed models are reliable in such calculations and can be used for thermodynamic correlation/predictions; however, by using an ion-based parameter calculation method, the PHSC EOS reveals both reliability and universality of applications.

The free volume theory has found practical application for prediction of diffusional behavior of polymer/solvent systems. In this paper, reviewing free volume theory, binary mutual diffusion coefficients in some polymer/solvent systems have been systematically presented through chemical thermodynamic modeling in terms of both activity coefficients and fugacity coefficients models. Here chemical thermodynamic model of compressible regular solution (CRS) was used for evaluation of diffusion coefficients calculations as the pure component properties would be required only. Four binary polymeric solutions of cyclohexane/polyisobutylene, n -pentane/polyisobutylene, toluene/polyisobutylene and chloroform/polyisobutylene were considered. The agreement between calculated data and the experimentally collected data was desirable and no considerable error propagation in approximating mutual diffusion coefficients has been observed.

In the present study, an actual heat engine is investigated by using different thermoeconomic evaluation criteria in the literature. A criteria that has not been investigated in detail is considered and it is called as ecologico-economical criteria (FEC${F_{{\rm{EC}}}}$). It is the difference of power cost and exergy destruction rate cost of the system. All four criteria are applied to an irreversible Carnot heat engine, results are presented numerically and some suggestions are made.

The total cost of ownership is calculated for a combined heating and humidification coil of an air-handling unit taking into account investment and operation costs simultaneously. This total cost represents the optimization function for which the minimum is sought. The parameters for the cost dependencies are the physical dimensions of the coil: length, width and height. The term “coil” is used generically since in this setup it generates heating as well as humidification in a single unit. The first part of the paper deals with the constructive optimization and finds the relationship between the dimensions for a minimum cost. The second part of the paper takes the results of the constructive optimization further and, based on the data derived in our previous papers, analyzes the minimum total cost for the humidification coil while balancing the amount of water used to humidify the air and modify its temperature.

A computational algorithm based on the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is proposed to model reaction–diffusion systems. In this paper, we focus on how nonlinear chemical oscillators like Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) and the chlorite–iodide–malonic acid (CIMA) reactions can be modeled by LBM and provide with new insight into the nature and applications of oscillating reactions. We use Gaussian pulse initial concentrations of sulfuric acid in different places of a bidimensional reactor and nondiffusive boundary walls. We clearly show how these systems evolve to a chaotic attractor and produce specific pattern images that are portrayed in the reactions trajectory to the corresponding chaotic attractor and can be used in robotic control.