Bubbling behaviors induced by gas-liquid mixture permeating through a porous medium

This paper investigates the bubbling behaviors induced by gas-liquid mixture permeating through porous medium (PM), which was observed in developing immersion lithography system and was found having great differences with traditional bubbling behaviors injected with only gas phase through the PM. An experimental setup was built up to investigate the bubbling characteristics affected by the mixed liquid phase. Both the flow regimes of gas-liquid mixture in micro-channel (upstream of the PM) and the bubbling flow regimes in water tank (downstream of the PM) were recorded synchronously by high-speed camera. The transitions between the flow regimes are governed by gas and liquid Weber numbers. Based on the image analysis, the characteristic parameters of bubbling region, including the diameter of bubbling area on PM surface, gas-phase volume flux, and dispersion angle of bubbles in suspending liquid, were studied under different proportions of gas and liquid flow rate. Corresponding empirical correlations were developed to describe and predict these parameters. Then, the pertinent bubble characteristics in different bubbling flow regimes were systematically investigated. Specifically, the bubble size distribution and the Sauter mean diameter affected by increasing liquid flow rate were studied, and the corresponding analysis was given based on the hydrodynamics of bubble-bubble and bubble-liquid interactions. According to dimensionless analysis, the general prediction equation of Sauter mean diameter under different operating conditions was proposed and confirmed by experimental data. The study of this paper is helpful to improve the collection performance of immersion lithography and aims to reveal the differences between the bubbling behaviors on PM caused by only gas flow and gas-liquid mixture flow, respectively, for the researches of fluid flow. Published by AIP Publishing.