Isotropic-turbulence-induced mass transfer across a severely contaminated water surface

Abstract

Direct numerical simulations were performed to investigate the effect of severe contamination on interfacial gas transfer in the presence of isotropic turbulence diffusing from below. A no-slip boundary condition was employed at the interface to model the severe contamination effect. The influence of both Schmidt number ($Sc$) and turbulent Reynolds number ($R_{T}$) on the transfer velocity ($K_{L}$) was studied. In the range from $Sc=2$ up to $Sc=500$ it was found that $K_{L}\propto Sc^{-2/3}$, which is in agreement with predictions based on solid–liquid transport models, see e.g. Davies (1972, Turbulence Phenomena, Academic). For similar $R_{T}$, the transfer velocity was observed to reduce significantly compared with the free-slip conditions. The reduction becomes more pronounced with increasing Schmidt number. Similar to the observation for free-slip conditions made by Theofanous et al. (Intl J. Heat Mass Transfer, vol. 19 (6), 1976, pp. 613–624), the normalized $K_{L}$ in the present no-slip case was also found to depend on $R_{T}^{-1/2}$ and $R_{T}^{-1/4}$ for small and large turbulent Reynolds numbers, respectively.