VOLUME-OF-FLUID SIMULATION OF GAS DISSOLUTION IN LIQUID: RISING BUBBLES AND CO2 TRAPPING

Abstract

Multiphase multispecies transport is an essential field of study for a wide range of applications including bubble reactors and CO2 storage in the subsurface. Modelling of these processes is challenging due to the discontinuity of material properties, making accurate modelling of mass transfer at reactive interface difficult. Maes and Soulaine (2020) have recently developed a numerical model based on a single-field formulation for Volume-Of-Fluid simulation of interfacial mass transfer with local volume changes. This model was validated by comparison with a semi-analytical solution for the dissolution of a rising bubble of gas in liquid in the creeping (or spherical) flow regime. However, this model is only first-order accurate, and will therefore depend strongly on the discretization scheme used. In this work, we consider two different numerical schemes for the discretization of species interfacial fluxes. Convergence and accuracy are compared for dissolution of a rising bubble of gas in liquid at various regimes (spherical, ellipsoidal shape and dimpled ellipsoidal shaped). The model is then applied to simulate the dissolution of trapped bubble of CO2 in a cavity.