Assignment 4: Unidirectional transport. Similarity solutions.

1. If the width of the plume from a smokestack is 0.2 m after it has risen a
distance of 10 m, what is the width after it has risen a distance of 20 m,
if it expands as a Gaussian plume? Consider the velocity of the discharge
to be independent of height.
2. Consider the flow in a packed bed with porosity 0.4 and a superficial
velocity of 0.1 m/s. In order to calculate the dispersion coefficient, a pulse
of dye is injected at the inlet, and the concentration of the dye is monitored
at a distance 1 m downstream of the inlet. The dye concentration is found
to have a standard deviation of 1 cm. What is the dispersion coefficient?
3. In a liquid-gas contacter, a liquid film of thickness 1mm is flowing down a
vertical surface with a velocity 0.2m/s is in contact with a gas dissolving
into the liquid. Consider the liquid film to be of sufficiently large thickness
so that the problem can be considered as diffusion into a medium of infinite
extent. The diffusion coefficient of the gas in the liquid is 1.6 × 10−9 m2 /s,
the surface concentration of the gas is 20 mg/l. It is desired that the
average concentration of the gas in the liquid at the exit is 1mg/l. Design
the length of the contacter as follows.

(a) What is the total amount of gas which should be transferred to the
liquid, per unit surface area, by the time the liquid leaves the con-
tacter?
(b) If the gas is in contact for a time t seconds, what is M (t), the total
amount of gas transferred to the liquid per unit area within the time
t seconds?
(c) What is the length necessary for achieving the desired outlet concen-
tration in the gas?

4. Consider the melt pool above a solid with is expanding due to transfer of
heat from above. The solid below and the liquid above can be approx-
imated as semi-infinite media. The solid is at the melting temperature
Tm , while the liquid far above the solid-liquid interface is at temperature
T0 > Tm . If the thermal conductivity and diffusivity of the liquid are k
and α respectively, the latent heat for melting the solid is λ, and the den-
sity of the solid is ρ, determine the rate at which the solid-liquid interface
moves upwards as follows.
(a) What is the downward heat flux from the liquid to the solid?
(b) If q is the heat flux, at what rate does the solid-liquid interface moves
upwards?
(c) Under what condition can the temperature field considered to be
steady in a reference frame moving with the interface.