Numerical Study on Mass Transfer of a Vapor Bubble Rising in Very High Viscous Fluid

This study focused on a bubble rising behavior in a molten glass because it is important to improve the efficiency of removal of bubbles from the molten glass. On the other hand, it is expected that some gas species which exists in a bubble are transferred into the molten glass through the bubble interface, i.e., the mass transfer, subsequently, it may cause a bubble contraction in the molten glass. In this paper, in order to understand the bubble rising behavior with its contraction caused by the mass transfer through the bubble interface in the very high viscous fluid such as the molten glass, a bubble contraction model has been developed. The direct numerical simulations based on the MARS (Multi-interface Advection and Reconstruction Solver) coupled with the mass transfer equation and the bubble contraction model regarding the mass transfer from the rising bubble in very high viscous fluid have been performed. Here, the working fluids were water vapor as the gas species and the molten glass as the very high viscous fluid. Also, the jump conditions at the bubble interface for the mass transfer were examined. Furthermore, the influence of the bubble contraction for the bubble rising compared to that in the water as a normal viscous fluid was investigated. From the result of the numerical simulations, it was found that the bubble rising behavior was strongly affected not only by the viscosity of the working fluid but also by the bubble contraction due to the mass transfer through the bubble interface.