Numerical study of the drag force, interfacial area and mass transfer in bubbles in a vertical pipe

A systematic numerical study of drag force and mass transfer in gravity-driven bubbles in a vertical pipe is performed at Re∼O(100−1000). This research employs a parallel multi-marker unstructured conservative level set method for interface capturing, avoiding the numerical coalescence in bubble swarms. The finite volume method discretises transport equations on 3D collocated unstructured meshes. Unstructured flux limiter schemes solve the convective term of transport equations, preserving the numerical stability at high Reynolds numbers and high-density ratios. Thermodynamic equilibrium is assumed at the interface for the concentration of chemical species. The hydrodynamics and mass transfer of bubbles are validated against classical correlations from the literature. Finally, direct simulations are executed to develop new correlations for the drag force, normalised bubble surface and Sherwood number for bubbles in a vertical pipe.