Disjoining Pressure Driven Transpiration of Water in a Simulated Tree

TL;DR

This study uses continuum simulations incorporating disjoining pressure to explain water transpiration in tall trees, demonstrating molecular interactions' role in generating negative pressures and limiting tree height.

Contribution

The paper develops a continuum simulation model that integrates disjoining pressure effects to accurately replicate water transport and transpiration in tall trees.

Findings

Disjoining pressure induces negative pressures up to -23.5 atm during evaporation.

Simulation results align well with experimental data on nanochannel wicking.

The model predicts an upper height limit for trees based on nanofluidic effects.

Abstract

We present an investigation of transpiration of water in a 100 m tall tree using continuum simulations. Disjoining pressure is found to induce absolute negative pressures as high as -23.5 atm at the liquid-vapor meniscus during evaporation, thus presenting a sufficient stand-alone explanation of the transpiration mechanism. In this work, we begin by first developing an expression of disjoining pressure in a water film as a function of distance from the surface from prior experimental findings. The expression is then implemented in a commercial computational fluid dynamics solver and the disjoining pressure effect on water wicking in nanochannels of height varying from 59 nm to 1 micron is simulated. The simulation results are in excellent agreement with experimental data, thus demonstrating and validating that near-surface molecular interactions can be integrated in continuum numerical simulations through the disjoining pressure term. Following the implementation, we simulate the transpiration process of passive water transport over a height of 100 m by using a domain comprising of nanopore connected to a tube with a ground-based water tank, thus mimicking the stomata-xylem-soil pathway in trees. By varying the evaporation rate from liquid-vapor interface in the nanopore, effects on naturally-created pressure difference and liquid flow velocity are estimated. Further, kinetic theory analysis is performed to study the combined effect of absolute negative liquid-film pressure and accommodation coefficient on the maximum mass flux feasible during transpiration. Continuum simulations coupled with kinetic theory reiterate the existence of an upper limit to height of trees. The numerical model developed here is adept to be employed to design and advance several other nanofluidics-based natural and engineering systems.