Eur. Phys. J. E (2019) 42: 86
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2019-11849-0

Colloquium

European Space Agency experiments on thermodiffusion of fluid mixtures in space

¹ European Space Agency (ESA), ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
² Laboratoire de Chimie-Physique, UMR 8000 CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France
³ Nanotemper Technologies GmbH, Munich, Germany
⁴ Laboratoire des Fluides Complexes et leurs Réservoirs - IPRA, UMR5150, E2S-Univ Pau & Pays Adour / CNRS / TOTAL, 1 Allée du Parc Montaury, 64600, Anglet, France
⁵ Laboratoire des Fluides Complexes et leurs Réservoirs - IPRA, UMR5150, E2S-Univ Pau & Pays Adour / CNRS / TOTAL, 64000, Pau, France
⁶ MGEP Mondragon GoiEskola Politeknikoa, Mechanical and Industrial Manufacturing Department, Mondragon, Spain
⁷ Department of Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara, 93106, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
⁸ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Milano, I-20133, Milano, Italy
⁹ Dipartimento di Biotecnologie Mediche e Medicina Traslazionale, Università degli Studi di Milano, 20090, Segrate, Italy
¹⁰ Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, 10012, New York, NY, USA
¹¹ E-USOC. ETSIAE, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
¹² MRC, Université libre de Bruxelles, Av. F.D. Roosevelt, 50, CP165/62, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹³ Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), 2, Place Maurice Quentin, 75001, Paris, France
¹⁴ Departament de Química Física i Inòrganica, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
¹⁵ Erlangen Graduate School in Advanced Optical Technologies (SAOT), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen, Germany
¹⁶ Institute of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, Duy Tan University, 10C Tran Nhat Duat Street, District 1, 700000, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
¹⁷ Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bayreuth, D-95440, Bayreuth, Germany
¹⁸ Institute of Continuous Media Mechanics UB RAS, 614013, Perm, Russia
¹⁹ Departamento de Estructura de la Materia, Facultad de Fisica, Universidad Complutense, Plaza de las Ciencias 1, 28040, Madrid, Spain
²⁰ Institute of Computational Modelling SB RAS, 660036, Akademgorodok, Krasnoyarsk, Russia
²¹ Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK
²² Key Laboratory of Microgravity, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China
²³ State Key Laboratory of Enhanced Oil Recovery (Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration & Development), CNPC, Beijing, China

^* e-mail: marco.braibanti@esa.int

Received: 21 March 2019
Accepted: 5 June 2019
Published online: 11 July 2019

Abstract

This paper describes the European Space Agency (ESA) experiments devoted to study thermodiffusion of fluid mixtures in microgravity environment, where sedimentation and convection do not affect the mass flow induced by the Soret effect. First, the experiments performed on binary mixtures in the IVIDIL and GRADFLEX experiments are described. Then, further experiments on ternary mixtures and complex fluids performed in DCMIX and planned to be performed in the context of the NEUF-DIX project are presented. Finally, multi-component mixtures studied in the SCCO project are detailed.