Hydrodynamics of slug flow inside capillaries

Understanding the motion of long gas bubbles (gas slugs) inside capillaries is a challenging problem that is relevant in many processes of chemical and biological interests. It has been proved by many workers that such long gas bubbles can be used successfully in enhancing mass and heat transfer in many chemical and biological processes. In order to quantify and understand this enhancement a light was shed on the hydrodynamics of such a flow pattern. The volume of fluid method implemented in the commercial CFD package, Fluent, is used for this numerical study. Velocity and bubble profile were obtained as functions of capillary number. Computed values of the bubble velocity and diameter were in excellent agreement with published experimental measurements. The detailed velocity field around the bubble was also computed and compared favourably with those experimental results reported in literature.