Cell model of the direct current electrokinetics in salt-free concentrated suspensions: The role of boundary conditions

In this paper, a general electrokinetic theory for concentrated suspensions in salt-free media is derived. Our model predicts the electrical conductivity and the electrophoretic mobility of spherical particles in salt-free suspensions for arbitrary conditions regarding particle charge, volume fraction, counterion properties, and overlapping of double layers of adjacent particles. For brevity, hydrolysis effects and parasitic effects from dissolved carbon dioxide, which are present to some extent in more realistic salt-free suspensions, will not be addressed in this paper. These issues will be analyzed in a forthcoming extension. However, previous models are revised, and different sets of boundary conditions, frequently found in the literature, are extensively analyzed. Our results confirm the so-called counterion condensation effect and clearly display its influence on electrokinetic properties such as electrical conductivity and electrophoretic mobility for different theoretical conditions. We show that the electrophoretic mobility increases as particle charge increases for a given particle volume fraction until the charge region where counterion condensation takes place is attained, for the above-mentioned sets of boundary conditions. However, it decreases as particle volume fraction increases for a given particle charge. Instead, the electrical conductivity always increases with either particle charge for fixed particle volume fraction or volume fraction for fixed particle charge, whatever the set of boundary conditions previously referred. In addition, the influence of the electric permittivity of the particles on their electrokinetic properties in salt-free media is examined for those frames of boundary conditions.