Botan Liu

Characterization of Rayleigh Convection in Interfacial Mass Transfer by Lattice Boltzmann Simulation and Experimental Verification

Abstract Concentration gradient induced Rayleigh convection can influence effectively interfacial mass transfer processes, but the convection phenomena are known as mesoscopic and complex. In order to investigate this phenomenon, a two-equation Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) is proposed to simulate the velocity and the concentration distributions of Rayleigh convection generated in the CO 2 absorption into ethanol liquid. The simulated results on velocity distributions are experimentally verified by PIV (particle image velocimetry technique) measurements. In order to simplify the analysis, the convection in the simulation as well as in the experiment, the Rayleigh convection was manipulated into a single down flow pattern. The simulated results show that the concentration contours agree qualitatively with the schlieren images in the literature. The experimental and simulated results show that the Rayleigh convection under investigation is dominated by the flow in the downward direction and impels exchange of the liquid between the interfacial vicinity and the liquid bulk promoting the renewal of interfacial liquid, and hence enhances mass transfer. The comparison between the simulated and experimental results demonstrated that the proposed LBM is a promising alternative for simulating mass transfer induced Rayleigh convection.

A New Model for the Simulation of Distillation Column

A new computational mass transfer model is proposed for simulating the distillation process by solving the fluctuating mass flux for the closure of turbulent mass transfer equation in order to obtain the concentration profile and the separation efficiency of distillation column. The feather of the proposed model is to abandon the conventional way of introducing the turbulent mass transfer diffusivity (dispersion coefficient) to the turbulent mass transfer equation. To verify the validity of the proposed model, a commercial scale packed column and a sieve tray column were simulated and compared with published experimental data. The simulated results were satisfactorily confirmed in both concentration distribution and separation efficiency.