Regular PapersNo Access

Mass Transfer Enhancement by a Single Emulsion Droplet

Sungho Yoon

Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2, Canada

Search for more papers by this author

and

Yong Tae Kang

School of Mechanical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 136-701, Republic of Korea

E-mail Address: ytkang@korea.ac.kr

Search for more papers by this author

https://doi.org/10.1142/S2010132516500036Cited by:1 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

The mass transfer enhancement (MTE) by a single emulsion droplet subjected to a Poiseuille flow is studied by using h-adaptive finite element approximation. The Navier–Stokes equations with the surface tension force at a droplet–fluid phase for the fluid flows are considered. The mass transfer is modeled by convection–diffusion equation. The interface capturing method with a conservative level set approach is employed to track the interface of a droplet. This is also incorporated with a mesh adaptivity for increasing the resolution in vicinity of the interface of the droplet. We numerically investigate the effect of hydrodynamic interactions of the droplet with the fluid on the mass transfer in varying physical parameters of the fluid flows and the suspended droplet in order to find the optimum conditions to invoke the enhanced MTE. It is found that Pe is an important factor to enhance the mass transfer transported by the convective current with diffusion. It is also found that Ca is an important factor for MTE considering disturbances and deformability of the droplet during the mass transfer process. It is found that the MTE decreases with increasing Ca in a high concentration region ( $C = 0.9$ $C = 0.9$ ) while MTE does not depend much on Ca in a low concentration region ( $C = 0.1$ $C = 0.1$ ).

Keywords:

References

1. A. L. Ahmad, A. R. Sunarti, K. T. Lee and W. J. N. Fernando, CO₂ removal using membrane gas absoprtion, Int. J. Greenhouse Gas Control 4 (2010) 495–498. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
2. J. D. Figueroa, T. Fout, S. Plasynski and H. Mc, Advances in CO₂ caputure technology-The U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Sequestration Program, Int. J. Greenhouse Gas Control 2 (2008) 9–20. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
3. E. Alper and W. C. Deckwer, Gas absorption mechanism in catalytic slurry reactors, Chem. Eng. Sci. 35 (1980) 217–222. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
4. E. Nagy, T. Blickle and A. Ujhdy, Enhancement of gas absorption rate as a function of the particle size in slurry reactors, Chem. Eng. Sci. 41 (1986) 2193–2195. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
5. A. Mehra, Intensification of multiphase reactions through the use of a microphase — I. Theoretical, Chem. Eng. Sci. 43 (1988) 899–912. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
6. E. Dumont and H. Delmas, Mass transfer enhancement of gas absorption in oil-in-water systems: A review, Chem. Eng. Process. 42 (2003) 419–438. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
7. R. Prasher, P. Bhattacharya and P. E. Phelan, Brownian-motion-based convective-conductive model for the effective thermal conductivity of nanofluids, J. Heat Transfer 128 (2006) 588–595. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
8. S. Krishnamurthy, P. Bhattacharya, P. E. Phelan and R. S. Prasher, Thermal conductivity of nanoscale colloidal solutions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 4 (2005) 025901. Google Scholar
9. S. Krishnamurthy, P. Bhattacharya, P. E. Phelan and R. S. Prasher, Enhanced mass transport in nanofluids, Nano Lett. 6 (2006) 419–423. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
10. B. Olle, S. Bucak, T. C. Holmes, L. Bremberg, T. A. Hatton and D. L. C. Wang, Enhancement of oxygen mass transfer using functionalized magnetic nano-particles, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 45 (2006) 4355–4363. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
11. X. Fang, Y. Xuan and Q. Li, Experimental investigation on enhanced mass transfer in nanofluids, Appl. Phys. Lett. 95 (2009) 203108. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
12. J. Veilleux and S. Coulombe, A dispersion model of enhanced mass diffusion in nanofluids, Chem. Eng. Sci. 66 (2011) 2377–2384. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
13. P. Keblinski and J. Thomin, Hydrodynamic field around a Brownian particle, Phys. Rev. E 73 (2006) 010502. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
14. H. Y. Sul, J. J. Jung and Y. T. Kang, Thermal conductivity enhancement of binary nanoemulsion (OS) for absorption application, Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer 54 (2011) 1649–1653. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
15. S. Osher and J. A. Sethian, Fronts propagating with curvature dependent speed algorighms based on Hamilton-Jacobi formulation, J. Comput. Phys. 79 (1988) 12–49. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
16. S. Osher and R. Fedkiw, Level Set Methods and Dynamic Implicit Surfaces (Springer-Verlag, New York, 2003). Crossref, Google Scholar
17. E. Olsson, E. Kreiss and S. Zahedi, A conservative level set method for two phase flow II, J. Comput. Phys. 225 (2007) 785–807. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
18. W. Bangerth, R. Hartmann and G. Kanschat, deal.II — A general purpose object oriented fintie element library, ACM Trans. Math. Softw. 33 (2007) 1–27. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
19. J. U. Brackbill, D. Kothe and C. Zemach, A continuum method for modeling surface tension, J. Comput. Phys. 100 (1992) 335–353. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
20. J. Guermond and L. Quartapelle, On the approximation of the unsteady Navier-Stokes equations by finite element projection methods, Numer. Math. 80 (1998) 207–238. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
21. J. Guermond, P. Minev and J. Shen, Error analysis of pressure-correction schemes for the Navier-Stokes equations with open boundary conditions, SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 43 (2005) 239–258. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
22. J. Guermond, P. Minev and J. Shen, Finite Elements and Fast Iterative Solvers: With Applications in Incompressible Fluid Dynamics (Oxford University Press, USA, 2005). Google Scholar
23. Y. Sadd, Iterative Methods for Sparse Linear Systems (SIAM, 2003). Crossref, Google Scholar
24. S. Zahedi, M. Kronbichler and G. Kreiss, Spurious currents in finite element based level set methods for two-phase flow, Int. J. Numer. Methods Fluids 69 (2012) 1433–1456. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
25. W. C. Rheinboldt and C. K. Mesztenyi, On a data structure for adaptive finite element mesh refinements, ACM Trans. Math. Softw. 6 (1980) 166–187. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
26. W. D. McComb, The Physics of Fluid Turbulence (Oxford Science Publications, 1990). Crossref, Google Scholar
27. T. Elperin, N. Kleeorin and I. Rogachevskiis, Turbulent thermal diffusion of small inertial particles, Phys. Rev. Lett. 8 (1996) 224–227. Crossref, Web of Science, Google Scholar
28. S. Kim and S. J. Karrila, Microhydrodynamics: Principles and Selected Applications (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1991). Google Scholar