Enhancement of mass transfer from particles by local shear-rate and correlations with application to drug dissolution

We analyze hydrodynamic enhancement of mass (or heat) release rate from small spherical particles within fluid flows from local flow shear-rate, with application to drug dissolution. Combining asymptotic theories in the high/low shear Peclet number limits in Stokes flow with 205 carefully-developed computational experiments, we develop accurate correlations for shear enhancement of Sherwood/Nusselt number (Sh/Nu) as a function of shear Peclet and Reynolds number (S^*, Re _S). The data spanned S^* from 0 to 500 and Re _S from 0 to 10. In Stokes flow our correlations are highly accurate over the entire S^* range, whereas for finite Re _S < 1 accuracy is good for S^* up to a few thousand. Shear enhancement results from highly three-dimensional spiraling flow created by particle spin. We develop a model for particle slip velocity that is inserted into the Ranz/Marshall correlation to show that shear-rate enhancement strongly dominates convection, a result important to drug dissolution.