Mass-conserving advection–diffusion Lattice Boltzmann model for multi-species reacting flows

Given the complex geometries usually found in practical applications, the Lattice Boltzmann (LB) method is becoming increasingly attractive. In addition to the simple treatment of intricate geometrical configurations, LB solvers can be implemented on very large parallel clusters with excellent scalability. However, reacting flows and especially combustion lead to additional challenges and have seldom been studied by LB methods. Indeed, overall mass conservation is a pressing issue in modeling multi-component flows. The classical advection–diffusion LB model recovers the species transport equations with the generalized Fick approximation under the assumption of an incompressible flow. However, for flows involving multiple species with different diffusion coefficients and density fluctuations – as is the case with weakly compressible solvers like Lattice Boltzmann –, this approximation is known not to conserve overall mass. In classical CFD, as the Fick approximation does not satisfy the overall mass conservation constraint a diffusion correction velocity is usually introduced. In the present work, a local expression is first derived for this correction velocity in a LB framework. In a second step, the error due to the incompressibility assumption is also accounted for through a modified equilibrium distribution function. Theoretical analyses and simulations show that the proposed scheme performs much better than the conventional advection–diffusion Lattice Boltzmann model in terms of overall mass conservation.