Gas separator with the rarefied gas flow induced by a temperature field

A gas separator that utilizes the thermal transpiration phenomena in a rarefied gas is proposed. The separator is devised to work without intermission and the device itself does not contain moving parts. One of its minimal implementation, which consists of an array of micro-channels with temperature gradient along the channel, is investigated numerically on the basis of the Boltzmann equation for binary gas mixture. It is shown that the separator generates a difference of molar concentration between its two exits when a gas flow with finite Mach number is supplied to the device.