Visualisation of air–water bubbly column flow using array Ultrasonic Velocity Profiler

Abstract

In the present work, an experimental study of bubbly two-phase flow in a rectangular bubble column was performed using two ultrasonic array sensors, which can measure the instantaneous velocity of gas bubbles on multiple measurement lines. After the sound pressure distribution of sensors had been evaluated with a needle hydrophone technique, the array sensors were applied to two-phase bubble column. To assess the accuracy of the measurement system with array sensors for one and two-dimensional velocity, a simultaneous measurement was performed with an optical measurement technique called particle image velocimetry (PIV). Experimental results showed that accuracy of the measurement system with array sensors is under 10% for one-dimensional velocity profile measurement compared with PIV technique. The accuracy of the system was estimated to be under 20% along the mean flow direction in the case of two-dimensional vector mapping.

Keywords

• Two-phase bubbly flow
• Bubble column
• Ultrasonic Velocity Profiler (UVP)
• Sectorial array sensor