A numerical study on gas-liquid mass transfer in the rotor-stator spinning disc reactor

The gas-liquid mass transfer coefficient was investigated in a novel multiphase reactor: the rotor-stator spinning disc reactor. Direct Numerical Simulations of the flow field around a single bubble in the reactor showed that vortex stretching invoked the presence of turbulence inside the thin liquid film surrounding the bubble. The Direct Numerical Simulations further provided a measure for the eddy diffusivity in the thin liquid film caused by this increase in vorticity. An expression was subsequently derived from a mass balance using these eddy diffusivities in order to estimate the order of magnitude of gas-liquid mass transfer coefficients. These estimates were found to lie more in line with experimental results in literature than previously used mass transfer models based on Higbie׳s penetration theory.