  Interfacial mass transfer of low-diffusive substances in an unsteady flow
environment is marked by a very thin boundary layer at the interface and other
regions with steep concentration gradients. A numerical scheme capable of
resolving accurately most details of this process is presented. In this scheme,
the fourth-order accurate WENO method developed by Liu et al. (1994) was
implemented on a non-uniform staggered mesh to discretize the scalar convection
while for the scalar diffusion a fourth-order accurate central discretization
was employed. The discretization of the scalar convection-diffusion equation
was combined with a fourth-order Navier-Stokes solver which solves the
incompressible flow. A dual meshing strategy was employed, in which the scalar
was solved on a finer mesh than the incompressible flow. The solver was tested
by performing a number of two-dimensional simulations of an unstably stratified
flow with low diffusivity scalar transport. The unstable stratification led to
buoyant convection which was modelled using a Boussinesq approximation with a
linear relationship between flow temperature and density. The order of accuracy
for one-dimensional scalar transport on a stretched and uniform grid was also
tested. The results show that for the method presented above a relatively
coarse mesh is sufficient to accurately describe the fluid flow, while the use
of a refined mesh for the low-diffusive scalars is found to be beneficial in
order to obtain a highly accurate resolution with negligible numerical
diffusion.
