Studies on gas holdup in a bubble column using porous spargers with additives

High gas holdup and uniform fine bubble generation is very essential in froth floatation cell of mineral-based process industries. In this work, to generate uniform fine bubbles a bubble column with porous sparger have been used. The bubble column was characterized to study the effect of gas flow rate and concentration of additive Solution on the performance of bubble column with porous spargers. Various types of spargers namely poly par sparger. refractory brick sparger and ceramic sparger were used to produce air bubbles in the liquid phase water and the g-as holdup is estimated. The variation of gas holdup with respect to gas flow rate for different spargers and for different conditions is presented in this paper. It has been found that the gas holdup with addition of surfactants was in the range of 25-40%. The behavior of gas holdup is consistent with the existing theory and shows improvement over previous results. (c) 2008 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.