## Diffusion From Spheres

### Associated Hands-On Teaching Module: http://www.che.utah.edu/module/?p_id=35

This simulation is meant to demonstrate aspects of mass transfer in radial coordinates A summary of this system and its governing equations may be found below the simulation. Set up your initial conditions at the bottom of the applet and press play to run the reaction simulation in "real-time". Press fast forward to run as quickly as your computer is capable. Mouse-over each input to see a description of that option or variable.

1-D Mass Transfer in a Sphere / Drug Delivery Simulation

University of Utah - Department of Chemical Engineering
by Anthony Butterfield

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 x ln(x) y ln(y)
 Plot What: CL Cbc Cb Y Yf C(r) Ca(r) Fit to f(Y) t0 t1 m b
Simulation Constants and Variables:
Beaker
 t shrmindayweekmonthyrAEmsμspsdscsfsaszs V m3LmLbbl (UK)bbl (US, liq.)cm3ft3in3yd3cupgalfl ozpintqt C∞ Mmol/Lmol/m3mM
Concentrations
 CL Mmol/Lmol/m3mM Cbc Mmol/Lmol/m3mM Cb Mmol/Lmol/m3mM Y %
Simulation
 You may insert your own experimental Y data and compare it to simulation. Paste time data (in seconds) in the top text box and Y data (fraction of solute released) in the bottom text box. Data should be comma delimited.

Simplifying to Diffusion Out of a Single Bead into a Semi-Infinite Media

While this simulation models a more complex system with diffusion into a finite media with changing concentration, the traditional 1-D radial diffusion problem may be simulated by making the volume of water to beads very large. For example, one could reduce the number of beads to 1 and raise the liquid volume to a kiloliter. When this is done and dt is small enough to avoid numerical error, the concentration profile across the bead should be the same as that given by the analytical solution, Ca(r), which may be plotted using the appropriate check-box below the plot.

1. Running your alginate bead experiment in the lab and collect data from your spectrophotometer over time until the signal levels off.
2. There will be a lot of data points that need to be converted from voltage to concentration but you can’t go directly from V to C.
3. You will need to convert your voltage to transmittance and then to absorbance, using the methods described in your experiments with the spectrophotometers.
4. Transmittance to Absorbance
A = -log10(T)
5. Because A is proportional to C, to get the percentage released, Y, you need only divide A by the maximum A measured, if the experiment ran until the signal leveled off. If you did not let the experiment run until the maximum was found, you can convert to C using your calibration for fuschin, and use a calculated value of Cinf to determine Y.
6. You will not want to use every data point, as it will slow the simulation down too much. Instead, you can take, for example, every 50th data point in a Matlab vector of time, t, using the command
>> tnew=t(1:50:end)
7. Convert your data to a comma delimited form appropriate for the simulation. You can use the command
>> sprintf('%f,' , tnew)
8. Paste the comma delimited time and Y into the text boxes at the bottom of the simulation.