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Updated: May 27, 2026

The Diffusion of Passive Tracers in Laminar Shear Flow
Published on: May 1, 2018
Effect of dispersion on the diffusion zone in two-phase laminar flows in microchannels
Debapriya Chakraborty1, Nilanjana Bose, Sukanya Sasmal
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302, India.
Abstract:
Aim of the present work is to investigate the reaction-diffusion process of a two species system under laminar flow in a T-shaped microchannel. A zone formed at the interface between the aqueous solutions of these two species is affected by advection and diffusion. Through theoretical analyses and experimental results, the effect of dispersion has been shown to influence this diffusion zone. We have defined a parameter called effective diffusivity, to account for the dispersion effects and observed it to be a function of the channel Peclet number. In the limiting case of low Peclet number, this parameter is constant and turns out to be equal to the molecular diffusivity. We have also related effective diffusivity and the dispersion coefficient through scaling estimates.
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