Mass-transport enhancement in regions bounded by rigid walls

The mass transport into a fluid bounded by stationary rigid walls in the limit of large Péclet number, Pe, is examined analytically. Two model systems are considered in detail: a stationary cavity and a model involving two concentric rotating cylinders. A macroscopic gradient is imposed between the top and bottom surfaces. It is demonstrated that mass transport into the fluid is enhanced owing to a recirculation zone which is connected to the solid boundary through a boundary layer of thickness O(Pe−1/3) in which cross-stream molecular diffusion is balanced by convection. The associated enhancement is large and scales as Pe1/3. Our asymptotic analysis is found to be in good agreement with numerical solutions of the full transport equation.