Abstract

We numerically study the growth, rise, and interaction with the upper air-water interface of bubbles generated forcing air through a submerged orifice in a cylindrical vessel with polymeric surface containing quiescent water. The simulations were carried out using the volume of fluid (VOF) technique implemented in the commercial solver Fluent. We study the influence of numerical parameters as grid size, and physical parameters as orifice diameter and gas inlet velocity on bubble size and velocity. The first bubble is the slowest and the second is the fastest. For the case with an inlet velocity of 0.2 [m/s] and orifice diameter of 2.5 [mm] we have found bubbles with mean bubble Eötvös and Reynolds numbers of 4.9 and 1790 respectively. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd.