Moving Resistive Wire Electrodes

The wire movement creates a laminar boundary layer of nonuniform thickness in an otherwise stagnant electrolyte. The mathematical analysis includes consideration of ohmic wire resistance, convective mass transport, ohmic electrolyte resistance, charge-transfer polarization, and cell geometry. Transport equations describing cell operation at all fractions of the limiting current were solved by the method of orthogonal collocation. A comparison between calculations which use a local mass transfer coefficient to describe the mass transfer process, and those which use a complete solution of the convective diffusion equation, gave agreement to within 15% over a wide range of parameter space which includes most practical applications of moving resistive wire electrodes.