A Volume-of-Fluid-based numerical method for multi-component mass transfer with local volume changes

This paper addresses the direct numerical simulation of conjugate multi-component mass transfer, taking into account the accompanying local volume effect. A rigorous derivation of a one-field formulation of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations including volume effects is presented. A Volume-of-Fluid-based numerical method for the simulation of the resulting system of equations is developed and validated by comparison to analytical solutions in 1D and a semi-analytical test case in 3D. The implemented approach is applied to simulate the shrinking of a Taylor bubble with a pure gas phase in a square mini-channel and to the competing mass transfer in a multi-component mixture. The method can be used to study the local Sherwood numbers at fluid interfaces towards improving existing correlations for the prediction of mass transfer from rising bubbles. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.