Computational Analysis of Thermodiffusion in Ternary Liquid Mixtures
Abstract
Three dimensional and two dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations have been made to study the thermodiffusion in three ternary hydrocarbon mixtures of n-dodecane, isobutylbenzene and 1,2,3,4tetrahydronaphthalene. It was found that in all mixtures n-dodecane and 1,2,3,4-tetrahydronaphthalene enriched at the hot and cold wall, respectively. Isobutylbenzene showed a weak separation and a change in the direction of separation between the three mixtures. A comparison of the results from 2D and 3D simulations showed that 2D simulations are accurate to within 2% of the 3D counterparts and with a computational time that is 53 times smaller than that needed for 3D simulations.