A lattice Boltzmann model for coupled diffusion (Q2638296)

Multiple component diffusion is ubiquitous in most transport processes. When the different diffusing species interact the diffusion problem becomes more complicated because of the coupling that arises between the different species. These couplings lead to non-diagonal terms in the diffusion matrix that can be significant in the transport of components and properties of the diffusing media. The authors presented a new lattice Boltzman method that includes the effect of diffusion coupling in both diffusion and advection diffusion problem. At first they analysed this new model discussing its stability and accuracy. They showed that, by to derivatives of order higher than two, their model reproduces multicomponent diffusion. Next, they performed numerical experiments suggest that stability is probably maintained in more general situations. Next they develop the model to account for advections and show an example of application to flow in porous media in two dimensions and an example of convection due to salinity differences. They proved that the presented model with advection loses the unconditional stability, but offers a straight-forward approach to complicated two-dimensional advection and coupled diffusion problems.