Transport of neutral solutes in a viscoelastic solvent through a porous microchannel

Abstract

We study the effect of viscoelasticity on the transportation of neutral solutes through a porous microchannel. The underlying transport phenomenon, modelled using the simplified Phan-Thien-Tanner constitutive equation, is actuated by the combined influence of pressure gradient and electroosmosis. Here, we obtain the closed form solution for the velocity distribution inside the flow domain and calculate the concentration profiles of the neutral solutes within the mass transport boundary layer by invoking the similarity solution approach. To establish the efficacy of viscoelastic solvents in the transportation of neutral solutes, which may find relevance in transdermal drug delivery applications, here we show the variations in the local solute concentration, the length averaged solute concentration at the wall, and the Sherwood number with the viscoelastic parameter. The present study infers that the shear-thinning nature of the viscoelastic fluid enhances the convective mass transfer as well as the permeation rate in the porous membranes. A complex interplay between the fluid rheology and the porous structure of the walls influenced by the electrochemistry at the interfacial scale modulates the mass transfer boundary layer of neutral solutes, implicating an effective method of mass transport in transdermal drug delivery applications.

Numerical study of the vortex‐induced electroosmotic mixing of non‐Newtonian biofluids in a nonuniformly charged wavy microchannel: Effect of finite ion size

“…First, we solve Eqs. (3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9) to obtain the flow velocities. After the calculation of the flow field, we solve Eq.…”

“…A requirement of minimal volume for diagnosis as well as detection of biosamples/biofluids has drawn a great deal of research interest of microfluidics in biomedical, biological, and biochemical applications [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Proper mixing of biofluids and biosamples at a higher flow rate is essential for their effective diagnosis and quick prediction in biochemistry analysis of the aforementioned applications [9][10].…”

Spreadsheet analysis of the field‐driven start‐up flow in a microfluidic channel

“…( 5) is first-order in time only and does not need iteration within one time instant. For this scheme, the number of iterations is set to 1, which is in sharp contrast to the other schemes reported in the literature [9,12,41]. Thus, following this scheme, only one step in time is needed to be performed without involving further iterations.…”

“…The application of an electric field in manipulating flows in different areas of application-driven microfluidics is very often considered as the convenient flow actuation mechanism and has received prominence to the microfluidics research community [1][2][3][4][5]. In particular, this is a continuing trend in the paradigm of microscale transport processes for the last few years [6][7][8][9][10]. The paradigm of electrically actuated transport at the microfluidic scale offers a few distinctive transport features, which are, otherwise, very unlikely to realize in practice in the context of pressure-driven flow configurations [11,12].…”

Induced magnetic field and viscous dissipation on flows of two immiscible fluids in a rectangular channel

“…However, depending on the flow environment, an asymmetric thermal boundary condition may be required to investigate the system's underlying thermal transport properties. We'd like to point out that there are a few studies in the literature that analyze the thermo-hydrodynamics of both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids while taking the aforementioned thermal boundary conditions into account 19 – 21 .…”