Chemical Engineering Science, Volume 90, 7 March 2013, Pages 130-136.
A.F. Mills, B.H. Chang
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA and
School of Mechanical System Engineering, Incheon University, Incheon 406-772, South Korea.
Abstract
Contrary to claims made in the recent literature, we show that the classical approach to mass transport in gas mixtures can be used to model two-dimensional Stefan tube diffusion. Numerical solutions are obtained for water evaporating into air, using the Kramers–Kistemaker diffusion slip velocity as the boundary condition on the side walls. A comparison is made with the analysis of Salcedo-Diaz et al. (2008 Velocity profiles and circulation in Stefan-diffusion. Chem. Eng. Sci. 63, 4685–4693), in which the classical approach is rejected in favor of the Kerkhof–Geboers equations. Difficulties inherent in this latter approach are discussed in detail.