CARBON DIOXIDE-WATER BUBBLY FLOW IN A VERTICAL PIPE WITH OR WITHOUT CHEMICAL ABSORPTION

Abstract

CO₂ bubbly pipe flows with or without chemical absorption were measured to obtain spatial evolution of dissolving bubbly flows. The experiments were carried out using pure water and aqueous NaOH solution of pH = 13 at two gas volume fluxes. The spatial evolutions of flow patterns, mean void fractions, and bubble diameter distributions were obtained using an image processing method. The enhancement factor correlation proposed in our previous study was implemented into a three-dimensional one-way bubble tracking method to examine its applicability to CO₂-water bubbly flow with chemical absorption. The numerical prediction agreed well with the measured spatial evolutions with or without chemical absorption, which confirmed the applicability of the enhancement factor correlation to bubbly pipe flows.