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Molecular diffusion, often simply called diffusion, is the thermal motion of all (liquid or gas) particles at temperatures above absolute zero. The rate of this movement is a function of temperature, viscosity of the fluid and the size (mass) of the particles.
Diffusion is the net movement of anything (for example, atoms, ions, molecules, energy) generally from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in Gibbs free energy or chemical potential .
Gas exchange is the physical process by which gases move passively by diffusion across a surface. For example, this surface might be the air/water interface of a water body, the surface of a gas bubble in a liquid, a gas-permeable membrane, or a biological membrane that forms the boundary between an organism and its extracellular environment.
Fick's first law relates the diffusive flux to the gradient of the concentration. It postulates that the flux goes from regions of high concentration to regions of low concentration, with a magnitude that is proportional to the concentration gradient (spatial derivative), or in simplistic terms the concept that a solute will move from a region of high concentration to a region of low ...
One example of passive diffusion is the gas exchange that occurs between the oxygen in the blood and the carbon dioxide present in the lungs. [3] Facilitated diffusion is the movement of polar molecules down the concentration gradient with the assistance of membrane proteins. Since the molecules associated with facilitated diffusion are polar ...
Perhaps the greatest success of the kinetic theory of gases, as it came to be called, was the discovery that for gases, the temperature as measured on the Kelvin (absolute) temperature scale is directly proportional to the average kinetic energy of the gas molecules. Graham's law for diffusion could thus be understood as a consequence of the ...
Knudsen diffusion, named after Martin Knudsen, is a means of diffusion that occurs when the scale length of a system is comparable to or smaller than the mean free path of the particles involved. An example of this is in a long pore with a narrow diameter (2–50 nm) because molecules frequently collide with the pore wall. [1]
The gas must be compressed at each stage to make up for a loss in pressure across the diffuser. This leads to compression heating of the gas, which then must be cooled before entering the diffuser. The requirements for pumping and cooling make diffusion plants enormous consumers of electric power. Because of this, gaseous diffusion was the most ...