Matlab code to compute the flow of several substances, e.g., nitrogen, ethanol, butane, isobutane, through homogeneous membranes, membranes with several, different layers, and through stacks of several, individual membranes. The membranes in a membrane stack may each consist of different layers.
The state of the substances upstream of the membrane, or membrane stack, must be gaseous, and can be close to or at saturation. For the flow through the membrane, condensation and evaporation due to capillary condensation or due to the Joule-Thomson effect is taken into account. The energy balance and heat transfer from or to the downstream side of a membrane is taken into account.
Make the program subfolder be in the path of matlab, e.g., by starting matlab there. Type 'help program' to have an overview of the functions provided in there.
The code is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
For condensation due to the Joule-Thomson effect, see
W. Schneider. Vapor flow through a porous membrane — a throttling process
with condensation and evaporation, Acta Mechanica 47, 15–25 (1983).
doi:10.1007/BF01176497.
and
T. Loimer. Linearized description of the non-isothermal flow of a saturated
vapor through a micro-porous membrane, J. Membr. Sci. 301, 107–117 (2007).
doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2007.06.005.
Publications, for which this code was used, include
Thomas Loimer, Stepan K. Podgolin, Javad Sodagar-Abardeh, Dmitrii I. Petukhov, Andrei A. Eliseev. Influence of heat transfer and wetting angle on condensable fluid flow through nanoporous anodic alumina membranes, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 25, 3240–3250 (2023). doi:10.1039/d2cp04577j.
Katerina Setnickova, Roman Petrickovic, Petr Uchytil, Thomas Loimer. Experimental and numerical study of the flux of isobutane vapors near saturation through multi-layered ceramic membranes, Sep. Purif. Techn. 306, 122604 (2023). doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2022.122604.
T. Loimer. The curvature of an evaporating meniscus in a pressure driven flow through cylindrical pores, Proc. Appl. Math. Mech. 19, e201900114 (2019). doi:10.1002/pamm.201900114.
T. Loimer, K. Setnickova, P. Uchytil. Consideration of the Joule-Thomson effect for the transport of vapor through anodic alumina membranes under conditions of capillary condensation, Sep. Purif. Techn. 215, 548–556 (2019). doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2019.01.051.
P. Uchytil, J. Reznickova, K. Setnickova, T. Loimer. Comparison of the flow of permanent and condensable gases through an asymmetric porous membrane, Chemie Ingenieur Technik 88, 1779–1787 (2016). doi:10.1002/cite.201600047.
T. Loimer, P. Uchytil. Influence of the flow direction on the mass transport of vapors through membranes consisting of several layers. Exp. Thermal Fluid Sci. 67, 2–5 (2015). doi:10.1016/j.expthermflusci.2014.12.012.
P. Uchytil, T. Loimer. Large mass flux differences for opposite flow directions of a condensable gas through an asymmetric porous membrane. J. Membr. Sci. 470, 451–457 (2014). doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2014.07.055.
T. Loimer. The thermodynamic states of a fluid in a Joule-Thomson process involving phase changes at interfaces with large curvature. In M. Pilotelli, G. P. Beretta (Eds.). Proceedings of the 12th Joint European Thermodynamics Conference, Brescia, Italy, July 1–5, 2013, 537–541 (Snoopy, 2013).