Modeling and Simulation of Transient Phenomena in Electrochemical MHD

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation of electrochemical magnetohydrodynamics (ECMHD) is an area of great interest. This work focuses on modeling and numerical simulation of the transient electrochemical ECMHD phenomena in two-dimensional millielectrode electrochemical cells. We used a commercially available flow solver FLUENT for our simulations. A nonorthogonal structured finite volume mesh was created using a preprocessor with the capability to handle complex geometries such as a microfluidic cell. We wrote User Defined Functions (UDF) for aspects of the ECMHD phenomena that are not built into the flow solver. These include calculations of ionic flux, electrode current, Lorentz force, and heterogeneous Butler-Volmer electrode kinetics. In our model, Nernstian results can be obtained as a limiting case of the Butler-Volmer kinetics.