Effects of column diameter and liquid height on gas holdup in air-water bubble columns

Experiments on the total gas holdup, alpha(G), in air-water cylindrical bubble columns were carried out to investigate effects of the column diameter, D-H, and the initial liquid height, H-0, on alpha(G). Ranges of D-H and H-0 were 160 <= D-H <= 2000 mm and 400 <= H-0 <= 4000 mm, respectively. The superficial gas velocity, J(G), was varied from 0.025 to 0.35 m/s. The characteristics of gas holdup showed that all the flows in the present experiments were pure heterogeneous. The following conclusions were obtained for alpha(G) in air-water bubble columns: (1) the effects of D-H and H-0 on alpha(G) are negligible when scaling up from small to large bubble columns, provided that alpha(G) in the small columns are obtained for D-H >= 200 mm and Ho 2200 mm. The height-to-diameter ratio is useless in evaluation of the critical height, above which aG does not depend on H-0, (2) for the above ranges of D-H and H-0, Akita-Yoshida's and Koide's correlations can give good evaluations of alpha(G) for a wide range of J(G) by tuning the model constants, (3) for D-H < 200 mm, the decrease in D-H increases the population of large bubbles, which results in the decrease in alpha(G), and (4) for H-0 less than or similar to 2200 mm and D-H >= 200 mm, alpha(G) at a constant J(G) decreases with increasing H-0 and approaches an asymptotic value, and the Froude number using J(G) and H-0 as the characteristic scales well correlates alpha(G) in this regime. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.