Interfacial mass transfer in a turbulent multiphase flow

In many applications, such as rain droplets in clouds, vapor bubbles in sub-cooled environments, heat and mass transfer between the two phases occurs via dissolution, evaporation, and chemical reactions. For the simplest case, mass diffused out of large inertial particles will be transported and mixed by the surrounding turbulence. One important aspect of this problem is the flow structures of turbulence, so-called Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS) that serve as the transport barrier. Therefore, we designed an experimental system to simultaneously obtain the Lagrangian coherent structures as well as the dynamics of inertial particles that continuously release mass to be mixed in the surrounding flow. This experiment will help us to unveil how the interfacial mass transfer is coupled with the turbulent transport and how this coupling is affected by the flow structure.