The Application of Thermal Transpiration to a Gaseous Pump

Abstract

A direct thermal-to-pneumatic energy converter utilizing the principle of thermal transpiration through a porous membrane is described. The applicability of this no-moving-part pump to a fluidic control system is discussed. A laboratory model has been constructed and experimentally evaluated for several gases, membrane types, and temperature ranges. A theoretical model is derived from the binary diffusion equations of kinetic theory. A linearized version of this model is verified experimentally for small temperature gradients. The kinetic theory model is evaluated numerically to predict the static performance of a pump for large temperature gradients.