Effect of Viscosity Ratio on the Electric-Field-Driven Enhancement of Heat/Mass Transfer to a Spherical Drop

The effect of viscosity ratio on the electric-field-driven enhancement of heat/mass transfer to a spherical liquid drop of one dielectric fluid from another immiscible dielectric fluid is computationally investigated in this paper. The flow field is considered to be in the Stokes regime and the energy (species) conservation equations in the continuous phase are solved numerically using a fully implicit finite volume method. Results for flow outside the drop, transient temperature distributions, Nusselt number variations, and heat/mass transfer enhancement are presented for Peclet numbers varying from 10 to 500, dimensionless electric field frequency from 50 to 1000, and the ratio of viscosity of the continuous to the dispersed phase varying from 0.1 to 50. Steady and non-uniform unsteady electric fields are considered. The computational simulations show that when viscosity of the drop is lower than the viscosity of the surrounding fluid, a steady uniform electric field is more effective in enhancement of heat/mass transport compared to a non-uniform time periodic electric field. Conversely, when the continuous phase is less viscous than the drop, the non-uniform time periodic electric field provides improved heat/mass transport than the steady uniform electric field.