The Pigford Problem

Many mass transfer operations involve diffusion in fluids in laminar flow—for example, absorption without chemical reaction of a gaseous compound in a thin liquid film of a nonvolatile compound flowing vertically. Another example is laminar flow of compound through the membrane walls of the channel. The first case has applications in chemical engineering and environmental science; the second, in medicine and biomedical engineering. Both cases can be treated by the same equations, based on the solution given by Pigford in 1941.