CONVECTIVE DIFFUSION IN A TUBE WITH NON-UNIFORM INLET CONDITIONS

Convective diffusion in Poiseuille flow is investigated for a non-uniform distribution of the diffusing constituent at the tube inlet. The analytical solution is provided together with an efficient method to evaluate it numerically, including an appropriate recurrencecalculation scheme that facilitates the numerical effort. The solution is illustrated by considering relevant examples from the literature. In particular, homogeneous nucleation in a laminar flow diffusion chamber is analyzed, and the results show that the usual experimental inlet non-uniformities have a significant influence on the calculation of the saturation ratio and the nucleation rate.