Numerical investigation of single gas bubble rising in liquid column

Abstract

Analysis of bubble fluid dynamics forms the primary step to evaluate heat/mass transport phenomena encountered from rising bubble in liquid pool. Bubble rise in pools of fast reactor (FR) finds important applications in source term evaluation, purification of cover gas, and air cleaning efficiency of submerged wet scrubbers. In this study, interFoam module available in OpenFOAM numerically investigates bubble rise in liquid pool. The FVM solver solves transient conservation equations, and phase interface is bounded using MULES. Verification of interFoam module is done for 2- and 3-D benchmarks available in the literature. Bubble behavior has been simulated for 5 mm bubble rise in sodium for both 2- and 3-D cases. The 3-D bubble case is validated with data available from the literature for velocity. The study shows that terminal velocity changes with domain dimension and 3-D case predicts realistic velocity values. The bubble rise investigation is useful for safety studies related to FRs.