Asymmetric mass transfer across disparate material systems
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Date
2021-08
Authors
Banerjee, Souvik
Major Professor
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Thuo, Martin
Johnson, Duane
Jiang, Shan
Pathak, Siddhartha
Singh, Asheesh
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Abstract
Mass transfer is the translation of molecule or fluid elements from a point of space to the other caused by a driving force or potential. For brevity and clarity, we limit mass transfer to a static case of translation of an element from one point to other. From a static point of view surfaces, defined as an external boundary of a material, act as a frontier for mass transfer. Mass transfer across surfaces and interfaces are of consequential importance to material systems, which can be broadly categorize into two disparate systems- 1) Living and 2) non-living. Consequences of mass transfer in living systems include growth of an organism for example, growth of plants due to photosynthesis which involves mass transfer of CO2 or chemical communication between living organisms through semiochemicals like plant-plant communications through root exudates. There are consequential importance of mass transfer in non-living systems liking mixing of steel, polymer processing or separation of a component from a mixture. In this work we challenged the understanding and consequences of mass transfer across different kinds of surfaces in two material systems- organic (living) and inorganic (non-living). For clear understanding to the readers we have divided this thesis into two parts – 1) Part 1 consisting of two cases related to mass transfer in complex biological systems (organic) like plants and their consequences on plant fitness 2) Part 2 consisting of another case depicting mass transfer in inorganic systems related to tuning energy inputs for separation processes.
Part 1 of the thesis focus on two cases – 1) we studied the effect of mass transfer of CO2 across a membrane in in-vitro plant cultures. Specifically, we studied the effect of permeability of membranes on gas exchange and hence the efficiency of plant to do photosynthesis. Not only did we see that plants were starving of CO2 in closed plant cultures but also we noticed that lack of CO2 is changing the metabolic processes in plants significantly 2) we also demonstrated that chemical communication between plants occur when the plants are touching at the roots. This answers a decade old dilemma of the difficulty in understanding such communication through semiochemicals. We show that tactile communication via roots help in increasing plant fitness parameters and infer that this might be related to transfer of genetic materials in-between neighboring plants due to touching roots and the plants do not have to rely solely on communication via semiochemicals. Part 2 of the thesis focuses on how we can induce mass transfer and hence phase separation in metallic alloy systems using optical properties of elements present. Such mass transfer can lead to phase separation at low temperature using low power and energy.
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dissertation