Heat or mass transfer from a sphere in Stokes flow at low Péclet number

We consider the low Péclet number, Pe≪1, asymptotic solution for steady-state heat or mass transfer from a sphere immersed in Stokes flow with a Robin boundary condition on its surface, representing Newton cooling or a first-order chemical reaction. The application of Van Dyke's rule up to terms of O(Pe3) shows that the O(Pe3logPe) terms in the expression for the average Nusselt/Sherwood number are twice those previously derived in the literature. Inclusion of the O(Pe3) terms is shown to increase the range of validity of the expansion. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.