An exact analysis of scalar transport in hydromagnetic flow between two parallel plates: a multi-scale approach

Abstract

The present paper explores an analytical solution to study the two-dimensional concentration distribution of a solute in a conducting fluid flowing between two parallel plates in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. Mei’s homogenization technique is used to acquire the mean concentration distributions up to the second-order approximation and the transverse concentration distributions up to third order. An uneven form of the concentration cloud and the transverse variation of the concentration distribution in a hydromagnetic flow are illustrated for the initial stage. The rate of progress towards uniformity of a solute cloud seems much slower than that of normality. It is observed that the peak of the transverse mean concentration and transverse variation of the concentration distribution of the solute significantly decrease with the increase in the magnetic field for small dispersion times. This is because, with an increase in the magnetic field, the velocity profiles flatten at the central core region between the parallel plates. The research proposes a time scale of 10 δ 2 / D (where δ is half the distance between two parallel plates and D is the molecular diffusivity) to characterize the dispersion process to approach the transverse uniformity.