Hossein Rahideh

Abstract The temperature- and concentration-dependent heat and mass diffusivities of a solute-solvent system are computed using an optimization-based computational technique. The input data of this method is the measured transient temperature and concentration at some selected locations of the system. The element-wise differential quadrature method as an accurate and simple numerical technique in conjunction with the Newton-Raphson method were utilized to solve the corresponding nonlinear coupled differential equations. The objective function of the algorithm is the difference between the measured data and the numerical solutions of the heat and mass transfer governing equations. The optimization algorithm is developed using the conjugate gradient method (CGM). Also, the corresponding nonlinear coupled partial differential equations are solved by employing the element-wise differential quadrature method as a powerful numerical technique. The applicability and reliability of the approach are illustrated by solving the problem under different conditions. The results showed that the heat and mass diffusivities of the system could be satisfactory estimated, which enable us to advise the application of this algorithm for the other transport phenomena.