Theoretical description of phase behavior in micro-evaporators

流体与添加剂的混合物可以表现出丰富的相行为，这是人们希望在许多系统中描述的。例子包括胶体悬浮液、流体中的表面活性剂和溶质，如溶剂中的盐。它们在不同的行业和实验科学中都会遇到。根据添加剂的大小和复杂程度，可能会有许多结果阶段。如果系统被驱离平衡，状态或相的数量甚至会随着许多亚稳态的增加而增加，这可能取决于驱动和样品的历史。这些相的形核和长大提供了对相变动力学的洞察。我们想要研究最近提出的微型蒸发器装置中各种混合物的相行为，在这种装置中，流体是由溶剂通过薄的边界膜渗透而引起的。这种新型设备类似于现有的过滤设备，但驱动类型不同。我们期待着对相变动力学的进一步深入了解，因为它应该强烈地依赖于驱动的类型。相行为的理论模型计划在与开发该装置的实验者直接交互中完成，目前正在将其应用于许多不同的系统，用于基础和工业研究。理论描述将借鉴非平衡热力学、流体动力学描述、相变理论以及成核理论。

Mixtures of a fluid with additives can display rich phase behavior, which one would like to characterize in many systems. Examples include suspensions of colloids, surfactants in fluids, and solutes such as salts in solvents. They are encountered in diverse industries as well as in experimental science. Depending on the size and the complexity of the additives, there can be numerous resulting phases. If the system is driven out of equilibrium, the number of states or phases even increases with many metastable states, possibly depending on the driving and on the history of the sample. The nucleation and the growth of such phases gives insight into the kinetics of the phase changes. We want to investigate the phase behavior of various mixtures in recently proposed micro-evaporator devices, where a flow is induced by permeation of the solvent through thin bounding membranes. The novel device is similar to existing filtration devices, but the type of driving is different. We expect further insight into the kinetics of the phase changes, as it should depend strongly on the type of driving. The theoretical modeling of the phase behavior is planned to be done in direct interaction with the experimentalists who developed the device and are currently applying it to many different systems for both fundamental and industrial studies. The theoretical description will borrow from non-equilibrium thermodynamics, from hydrodynamic descriptions, from the theory of phase transitions as well as from nucleation theories.