Introduction to Transport Phenomena

Abstract

The study of transport phenomena—i.e., transfer of mass, momentum and energy—is increasingly recognized as a unified description of fundamental importance. It is a topical extension of the concepts and laws of mechanics. thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. The prediction of the mechanical transport of substances in the ocean is a difficult task since it requires knowledge of many other interrelated factors. These factors include convection (transport by the moving waters of the ocean), physical (transition between different states, nuclear decay), chemical (chemical decay of substances, reaction with other substances) and biological (accumulation and transport of substances by living organisms). The transport is not only by the mean current velocities but also by the presence of random chaotic fluctuations in the velocity field. For calculating advective transport of substances, data on the vector field of mean current velocities for the ocean region are needed as well as their variations with time.