Mesoscale structures in confined mass transfer processes
Modern chemical engineering research focuses on the mesoscale,where it is difficult to be described by classical theory of transfer and reaction due to the complexities of multi-scale,nonlinear,and multi-objective.Mesoscience was used in this work to study the confined mass transfer involved in the heterogeneous reaction,membrane separation,and other fields.Focusing on the mesoscale problems between pore channels under nanoconfinement(under system scale)and clusters of fluid molecules with asymmetric interactions(under unit scale),it is found that the mesoscale structures can be quantitatively described by viscous and frictional resistances.The confined degree and wetting parameter,as macro scale and micro scale structural parameters respectively,can be used to describe the compromise of competition between the liquid-liquid viscous-dominated mechanism and the solid-liquid frictional-dominated mechanism.In addition,the importance of mesoscale structures on confined mass transfer was discussed based on three cases:predicting the flux of solvents in sub nano confined membranes,predicting the selectivity of alcohol/water in two-dimensional graphene-based membrane separation,and the heterogeneous reaction of synthesizing H2O2 by H2 and O2 directly.This work is expected to provide a new perspective for the rational design of porous materials.
mesoscalemesoscienceconfined mass transfermesoscale structurerational design