Dispersive mass transfer, in fluid dynamics, is the spreading of mass from highly concentrated areas to less concentrated areas. It is one form of mass transfer.[1]
Dispersive mass flux is analogous to diffusion, and it can also be described using Fick's first law:
where c is mass concentration of the species being dispersed, E is the dispersion coefficient, and x is the position in the direction of the concentration gradient. Dispersion can be differentiated from diffusion in that it is caused by non-ideal flow patterns[1] (i.e. deviations from plug flow) and is a macroscopic phenomenon, whereas diffusion is caused by random molecular motions (i.e. Brownian motion) and is a microscopic phenomenon. Dispersion is often more significant than diffusion in convection-diffusion problems. The dispersion coefficient is frequently modeled as the product of the fluid velocity, U, and some characteristic length scale, α:
