Wei Lin, Yongbin Zhang

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer (FHMT) 18 - 48 (2022)

The nanoscale calculation was made for the water permeation through the cell membrane in human body, which has the thickness between 7nm and 8nm and has densely distributed nanopores with the radii ranging between 0.2nm and 0.5nm. The pressure drop and the critical power loss on a single nanopore for initiating the wall slippage were calculated. The wall slipping velocity was found to be significantly increased with the reduction of the pore radius and linearly increased with the increase of the power loss on the pore. For no wall slippage, the water mass flow rate through the pore is significantly lower than the classical hydrodynamic flow theory calculation; however it is much greater than and can even be 3 to 5 orders larger than the classical hydrodynamic flow theory calculation when the wall slippage occurs. This water flow enhancement is heavily dependent on the power loss on the pore.