Simulation of ultrasonic-driven gas separations

The separation of components in a gas mixture is important for a wide range of applications. One method for achieving this separation is by passing a traveling acoustic wave through the gas mixture, which creates a flux of the lighter components away from the transducer. A series of simulations was performed to assess the effectiveness of this method for separating a binary mixture of argon and helium using the lattice kinetics method. The energy transport equation was modified to account for adiabatic expansion and compression. The species transport equation was modified to include a barodiffusion term. Simulations were performed on two different scales; detailed acoustic wave simulations to determine the net component flux as a function of local concentration, pressure, etc. and device scale simulations to predict the gas composition as a function of time inside a gas separation cylinder. The method is first validated using data from literature and then applied to mixtures of argon and helium. Results are presented and discussed.