Liquid film motor

[CaptainPanic]

This seems like an invention that might have interesting applications in chemical reactor engineering. (The effect is purely physics though, which is why I posted here).

 

A thin liquid film is subjected to two perpendicular electric fields. This causes the film to rotate. I will just link to the sources for more explanation, because I don't quite understand it myself.

 

- Original article (.pdf), titled "A liquid film motor"

- Decent summary which links to the original article.

 

I think it could be great to be able to stir a reactor without having any moving parts (other than the liquid itself). What other applications can you think of?

 

This post is more a "for your information" kind of post. I don't have any question or discussion points. It's just cool, and I wanted to share this. Be sure to check the movies of the experiments here.

 

p.s. I found this article through slashdot, which I'm sure you all know already.

[insane_alien]

this was my first thought as well but, if you read it you'll see it only applies at the very small scale.

 

it could be used in microreactors but not big industrial monolithic reactors.

[CaptainPanic]

Microreactors are needed for some applications... pharma might need them sometimes. And perhaps many small scale reactors can do the same as one large one... at least, that's what I've understood from the microreactor researchers: they want many cheap microreactors in parallel.

 

As far as I know, microreactors are being stirred (sometimes) in funny ways. Spinning disc reactors have two oppositely spinning discs. The liquid is sandwiched in between. This seems like a more simple concept to scale up (scaling up by building more in parallel).

 

Of course you can just mix with convection and turbulence, using a pump.

 

(Perhaps we should move this to a chemistry or engineering subforum?)

[insane_alien]

well it definitely comes under chemical engineering if it is applied to microreactors.

 

i can't really comment on using it to power nano machines as i know nothing of those.

 

and yeah i know micro reactors do funny things for mixing i did a bit on them in my reactor design class last year. vibration is another method the use, they just vibrate the whole reactor assembly.