The effective diffusivity of ordered and freely evolving bubbly suspensions

TL;DR

This paper studies how passive scalars disperse in bubbly suspensions, extending existing theories to include inertial effects, and confirms findings through numerical simulations across different flow regimes and bubble configurations.

Contribution

It extends the theory of scalar dispersion in ordered suspensions to include weak inertial effects and compares ordered versus random bubble arrangements using simulations.

Findings

Inertial effects do not alter diffusivity scaling at low/high Péclet numbers.

Dispersion is enhanced at low Péclet numbers in both ordered and free-rise bubble arrays.

At high Péclet numbers, dispersion behavior shifts from Taylor to mechanical dispersion, even with low disorder.

Abstract

We investigate the dispersion of a passive scalar such as the concentration of a chemical species, or temperature, in homogeneous bubbly suspensions, by determining an effective diffusivity tensor. Defining the longitudinal and transverse components of this tensor with respect to the direction of averaged bubble rise velocity in a zero mixture velocity frame of reference, we focus on the convective contribution thereof, this being expected to be dominant in commonly encountered bubbly flows. We first extend the theory of Koch et al. (1989) (which is for dispersion in fixed beds of solid particles under Stokes flow) to account for weak inertial effects in the case of ordered suspensions. In the limits of low and of high P\'eclet number, including inertial effect of the flow does not affect the scaling of the effective diffusivity with respect to the P\'eclet number. These results are confirmed by direct numerical simulations performed in different flow regimes, for spherical or very deformed bubbles and from vanishingly small to moderate values of the Reynolds number. Scalar transport in arrays of freely rising bubbles is considered by us subsequently, using numerical simulations. In this case, the dispersion is found to be convectively enhanced at low P\'eclet number, like in ordered arrays. At high P\'eclet number, the Taylor dispersion scaling obtained for ordered configurations is replaced by the one characterizing a purely mechanical dispersion, like in random media, even if the level of disorder is very low.