High-resolution simulation of oscillating bubble plumes in a square cross-sectioned bubble column with an unsteady k-ε model

Abstract

How to choose the interphase force and turbulence models is still an open question for Eulerian simulation of bubbly flows. It is well accepted that an unsteady k-ε model that can simulate the meandering bubble plumes in a flat bubble column reactor (BCR) but fails to capture this phenomenon in a three-dimensional (3D) BCR. This work presents a GPU-accelerated fine-grid simulation with an unsteady k-ε model with a Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) based mixture model developed by Shu et al. (2020b) for a square cross-sectioned BCR. A good quantitative agreement between the numerical results and experimental data from the literature is achieved without a lift force. This work highlights that GPU-accelerated fine-grid simulations with an unsteady k-ε model can predict the bubble plumes in 3D BCRs, and that the lift force is not used in this case. The reason why lift is not needed in this case is discussed.