Transport in the Critical Region
The behavior of dynamic properties in the critical region is important in many engineering applications, and in this chapter we investigate this topic, focusing upon diffusion. In the literature, the term critical slowing down is used to describe the long relaxation times that occur when criticality is approached. Does this mean that diffusion processes per se come to a halt and, if not, how does slowing down manifest itself in fluids? We see that, in spite of the nonequilibrium nature of this topic, equilibrium concepts still play a key role in describing dynamics in the critical region. To begin this discussion, we investigate the dynamic behavior of a tagged fluid molecule as it experiences random fluctuations in its position in the fluid. These fluctuations would be induced by random thermally induced collisions between the tagged species and other fluid molecules. This type of dynamics is referred to as Brownian motion or a random walk. A schematic showing two 10-step trajectories depicting a random walk in two dimensions is shown in figure 12.1, and its analysis leads naturally to the definition of the self-diffusion coefficient.