Gerd Mutschke & Mengyuan Huang (Institute of Fluid Dynamics - Dresden)

Magnetic fields are used in many fields of daily life and continue to fascinate not only researchers but also the general public. This fascination stems from the diverse nature of magnetic forces, the invisibility of magnetic fields, and, more recently, also the development of powerful permanent magnets that drive advancements in technologies such as wind turbines and electric vehicles.

The talk will summarize work we have been involved in over the past years to study the control of flow and mass transfer in weakly conducting fluids as e.g. electrolytes. We will largely restrict to static magnetic fields and utilize tailored Lorentz and magnetic gradient forces to achieve the desired control by properly stirring or only locally accelerating the fluid. Special interest lies in electrochemical applications, where the electrical current driving the reaction and being necessary for generating a Lorentz force does not to have to be applied additionally.

The examples we show span over different length scales and range from attempts of separation control at flaps in marine applications, mass transfer control in electrochemical metal deposition and gas evolving processes down to the prospects of magnetically enhancing the production of micro- and nano-structured surfaces.