A Lagrangian Particle-Based Numerical Model for Surfactant-Laden Droplets at Macroscales

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Lagrangian particle-based numerical model for simulating surfactant-laden droplets in clouds, revealing surfactants' role in enhancing cloud formation and droplet circulation.

Contribution

It presents a novel microphysics scheme incorporating surfactants into cloud droplet modeling at macroscales, advancing understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions.

Findings

Surfactants increase the number and size of activated droplets.

Droplets tend to concentrate at the bottom and top of the cloud, indicating circulation.

Results are robust across different turbulence modeling approaches.

Abstract

Atmospheric aerosols can consist of inorganic and organic substances, including surfactants at a significant concentration. Importantly, the latter can reduce the surface tension at the liquid-vapor surfaces, where they preferentially adsorb due to their amphiphilic structure. As a result, processes such as droplet coalescence, development of precipitation and ultimately cloud lifetime, may depend on the presence of surfactants in the aerosols. Here, we present a numerical model for cloud droplet formation, which is based on the Lagrangian particle-based microphysics-scheme super-droplet method and takes into account the presence of surfactant in the droplets. Our results show that surfactant facilitates cloud formation by increasing the number and size of activated droplets, which concentrate at the bottom of the cloud, while the largest droplets are concentrated at the top of the cloud. This indicates a circulation of droplets that involves activation and growth processes from the bottom of the cloud towards the top. Moreover, our conclusions are independent of the particular approach used for modeling the diffusion of Eulerian variables due to the subgrid-scale turbulence. We anticipate that our results will enrich our understanding of the role of surfactants in the behavior of atmospheric aerosols and, importantly, will pave the way for further developments in the numerical modeling of systems with surfactants at macroscopic scales.