An Introduction to the Onsager Reciprocal Relations

Authors

  • Charles W. Monroe Imperial College London
  • John Newman Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and University of California

Abstract

The Onsager reciprocal relations are essential to multicomponent transport theory. A discussion of the principles that should be used to derive flux laws for coupled diffusion is presented here. Fluctuation theory is employed to determine the reciprocal relation for transport coefficients that characterize coupled mass and heat transfer in binary ideal-gas mixtures. This example illustrates the statistical basis of reciprocal relations among macroscopic transport properties.

Author Biographies

Charles W. Monroe, Imperial College London

Charles Monroe is a research associate in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London. Presently, his work pertains to the electrical and surface properties of interfaces between immiscible electrolytic solutions. The research is in collaboration with Prof. Alexei Kornyshev at Imperial and with Prof. Michael Urbakh at Tel Aviv University.

John Newman, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and University of California

John Newman joined the Chemical Engineering faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963, and has been a faculty senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 1978. His research involves modeling of electrochemical systems, including industrial reactors, fuel cells, and batteries, and investigation of transport phenomena through simulation and experiment.

Downloads

Published

2007-09-01

Issue

Vol. 41 No. 4 (2007): Fall 2007

Section

Manuscripts