Experiments on Turbulent Diffusion of the Gaseous Phase in Rectangular Bubble Column Using Image Processing

The paper describes the application of high-speed video observation combined with digital image processing techniques to measure the turbulent diffusion coefficient of the gaseous phase in a bubble column. The test channel is a rectangular bubble column with a cross-section of 100x20 mm and a height of 1500 mm. Sequences of the images were taken at different heights of the column with a high-speed video system. A diffuse illumination from the backside of the column was found to produce bubble images with a characteristic bright spot in the center. This bright spot was used for a bubble tracking that tolerates some overlapping of the bubbles. This allows to enhance the applicability of the bubble tracking to higher gas fractions compared to the tracking of the entire bubble shadows. After the bubble trajectories were extracted from the image sequence, the lateral displacement of bubbles between two virtual horizontal measuring planes was calculated for each bubble that crosses both planes. This lateral displacement is caused by the turbulent fluctuations of the bubble velocity. It is analyzed statistically by constructing probability density functions of the lateral displacement, which can be well described by Gaussean standard distributions. The dispersion coefficient of the standard distributions that were fitted to the experimental data shows a linear dependency from the square-root of the vertical distance between the two control planes, which supports the assumption of a diffusion model for the lateral displacement. Deviations from the linear dependency were identified to be the result of deterministic oscillatory motions of the rising bubbles. This effect is typical for low-viscosity liquids, while the bubble oscillations are damped at higher viscosities. Results are presented for different gas flow rates (superficial gas velocity ranged from 0.5 to 4 mm/s), different primary bubble sizes produced by a variation of the sparger and for liquids with different viscosity (water, ethylene glycol, mixtures of both). All measurements were taken at heights between 1 and 1.5 m, where the bubble cloud was occupying the entire cross section. Beside the turbulent diffusion study, the optical observation was used to obtain bubble sizes, gas fractions and rise velocities. Measured diffusion coefficients were compared to correlations from the literature and CFD simulations of the column using the code CFX.