Local investigations on the gas-liquid mass transfer around Taylor bubbles flowing in a meandering millimetric square channel

Lixia Yang (1) , Karine Loubiere (2) , Nicolas Dietrich (1, 3) , Claude Le Men (1) , Christophe Gourdon (2) , Gilles Hébrard (1, 3)

1 LISBP - Laboratoire d'Ingénierie des Systèmes Biologiques et des Procédés
2 LGC - Laboratoire de Génie Chimique
3 INSA Toulouse - Institut National des Sciences Appliquées - Toulouse

Gas-liquid mass transfer around Taylor bubbles moving in a meandering millimetric square channel was locally visualized and characterized in the present study. For that, the colorimetric technique proposed by Dietrich et al. (2013) was implemented. With this technique, the evolution of equivalent oxygen concentration fields in the liquid slugs passing through one and several bends was firstly described. In particular, it was observed how the flow structure (recirculation zones) inside the liquid slugs were twisted and split by the periodic bends (centrifugal effect), until reaching, after several bends, a uniform O-2 concentration inside the liquid slugs. The influence of the "turning point", joining two "straight" sections of meandering channel was also highlighted: a slowing down of the gas-liquid mass transfer was clearly shown. Volumetric mass transfer coefficients were determined at last by fitting the experimental axial profiles of averaged oxygen concentrations in the liquid slugs (before the turning point) with the ones predicted by a classical plug-flow model.

Mots clés: gas-liquid mass transfer; Taylor bubbles; meandering channel; colorimetric technique; image processing; mass transfer; colorimetric analysis

Mots clés: transfert de masse; cinétique de transfert; Analyse des flux métaboliques; analyse colorimétrique; bulle de gaz

Domaines: Génie des procédés

Lixia Yang, Karine Loubiere, Nicolas Dietrich, Claude Le Men, Christophe Gourdon, et al.. Local investigations on the gas-liquid mass transfer around Taylor bubbles flowing in a meandering millimetric square channel. Chemical Engineering Science, 2017, 165, pp.192-203. ⟨10.1016/j.ces.2017.03.007⟩. ⟨hal-01600809⟩