Experimental, theoretical and numerical interpretation of thermodiffusion separation for a non-associating binary mixture in liquid/porous layers

Thermodiffusion in a hydrocarbon binary mixture has been investigated experimentally and numerically in a liquid-porous cavity. The solutal separation of the 50% toluene and 50% n-hexane binary mixture induced by a temperature difference at atmospheric pressure has been performed in a new thermodiffusion cell. A new optimized cell design is used in this study. The inner part of the cell is a cylindrical porous medium sandwiched between two liquid layers of the same binary hydrocarbon mixture. Experimental measurement and theoretical estimation of the molecular diffusion and thermodiffusion coefficients showed a good agreement. In order to understand the different regimes occurring in the different parts of the cell, a full transient numerical simulation of the solutal separation of the binary mixture has been performed. Numerical results showed that the lighter species, which are of n-hexane migrated toward the hot surface, while the denser species, which is toluene migrated towards the cold surface. Also, it was found that a good agreement has been reached between experimental measurements and numerical calculations for the solutal separation between the hot and cold surface for different medium porosity. In addition, we used the numerical results to analyse convection and diffusion regions in the cell precisely.