Destabilisation of a homogeneous bubbly flow in an annular gap bubble column

Experimental results are presented to show that there are very significant differences in the mean gas void fractions measured in an open tube and a annular gap bubble column, when operated at the same gas superficial velocity, using a porous sparger. The mean gas void fraction decreases with increasing ratio of the inner to outer diameter of the annular gap column and the transition to heterogeneous flow occurs at lower gas superficial velocities and lower void fractions. Two reasons are proposed and validated by experimental investigations: (1) the presence of the inner tube causes large bubbles to form near the sparger, which destabilize the homogeneous bubbly flow and reduce the mean void fraction; this was confirmed by deliberately injecting large bubbles into a homogeneous dispersion of smaller bubbles and (2) the shape of the void fraction profiles changes with gap geometry and this affects the distribution parameter in the drift flux model.