Nanoparticle formation and growth processes are present in many engineering applications. For example, gas-phase material synthesis processes often contain mixing, fluid turbulence, and significant temperature gradients. Numerical simulation of the underlying vapor-to-particle dynamics can be very useful in affecting our ability to create particles with desired properties–size, shape/area, etc. However, there are an umber challenges associated with modeling the fluid/thermal-particle interactions. This work considers the modeling of molecular transport on the nucleation and dynamics of nano particles. There are a number of common assumptions in the modeling of aerosol physics and several of these pertain to molecular transport. These include the assumption of unity Lewis number, the neglect of heat release during nucleation, and the neglect of thermophoresis in the transport of sub-10 nm particles. Direct numerical simulation of particle formation and growth is performed and the results are used to evaluate the effects of each of the aforementioned assumptions in turbulent flows.
