ANALYSIS OF PSEUDO-CONTINUUM MASS-TRANSFER IN MEDIA WITH SPATIALLY PERIODIC BOUNDARIES

The theories developed by Taylor, Aris, and Gill for convective dispersion of soluble matter in nonuniform flow are extended to systems with spatially periodic boundaries. More specifically the generalized theory explains solute retardation and dispersion in columns packed with a regular array of permeable particles, and is thus applicable to most chromatographic processes. The general theory is then specialized to the case of solute dispersion in creeping flow through a body-center-cubic array of impermeable, spherical particles. Preliminary calculations indicate that the present theory predicts correctly solute dispersion at the zero-flow limit. However numerical difficulties are encountered in the calculations for convective dispersion which seriously limit the utility of the theory. © 1979.