An Analytical Observation of Soret Effects and Double Diffusive Convection in between Vertical Plates

Abstract

The Soret effect in fluids is a thermodynamic phenomenon in which different particles respond in different ways to varying temperatures which has been studied by the Swiss chemist Charles Soret, has been difficult to examine in detail on Earth because of gravity. The SCOF (Soret-Facet) is the first investigation to verify Soret conditions in steady and changing conditions and was conducted in space. The objective of this study is to present a mathematical observation of a sample taken in a vertical channel formed by two infinite vertical parallel plates to study Soret effect as an alternative to expensive space experiments. It studies the heat transfer of a fluid in a channel with one moving relative to the other, driven by two different rates of diffusion and observes how different particles in that fluid respond to varying temperatures. The methods employed on the governing coupled-nonlinear momentum and energy equations obtained from Navier-Stokes equations are implicit finite difference using FORTRAN. Exact solutions form integration are obtained for steady state dimensionless velocity, concentration, temperature for a fully developed flow using MATLAB. It is observed that time, bouyancy ratio and thermophoretic coefficient increase velocity at hot plate. These results are applied to studies in mass transport with heat and energy, including those in the Earth’s interior, oceans, atmosphere and in the refinement of crude oil. Conclusions are drawn from graphical representations of fluid velocity and fluid concentration for various parametric values.