Mass flow (life sciences)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Mass flow" life sciences – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In the life sciences, mass flow, also known as mass transfer and bulk flow, is the movement of fluids down a pressure or temperature gradient.^[1] As such, mass flow is a subject of study in both fluid dynamics and biology. Examples of mass flow include blood circulation and transport of water in vascular plant tissues. Mass flow is not to be confused with diffusion which depends on concentration gradients within a medium rather than pressure gradients of the medium itself.