A note on multicomponent diffusion
Stephen A. Shain · AIChE Journal · 1961
Abstract The problem of defining an average diffusion coefficient of a gas arises in the application of the film resistance model for mass transfer to systems involving multicomponent mixtures of simultaneously diffusing gases and in the application of mass, momentum, and heat transfer analogies in such systems. It is shown that, in some cases, integration of the diffusion equation with an average value of the diffusion coefficient will not be valid. An approximate solution of the diffusion equation is obtained with the concentration dependence of the diffusion coefficient taken into account. Some numerical examples are constructed for comparison of this method and several methods for defining an average diffusion coefficient with an exact solution of the Stefan‐Maxwell relations.