The effect of nozzle geometry on bubble formation : Physical modeling by air in a water tank

Sammanfattning: The bubble flow is used for different application in steel production and refining processes. It plays in indispensable role in the ladle refining process such as for homogenization and inclusion removal. Hence, it is important to understand the effect of the nozzle outlet geometry on the bubble formation. Three different nozzles with different outlet geometries were examined using a physical model. These geometries were: a) Circle, b) Square with round edges and c) Elliptical. All three nozzles had the same nozzle design and similar outlet cross-section areas. Therefore, the only tested parameter was the outlet geometry. The physical model is a water/air model, that consist of water tank ,the nozzles, gas gauge and a high speed camera. Each nozzle was tested under five different gas flow rates: starting from 10 L/min of air gas flow rate, until a 30 L/min of gas flow rate by incriminating with 5 L/min per experimental trial. Therefore, each nozzle was studied using a 5 experimental sets, so in total 15 experiments were made. For each set, 3000 photos were captured by the high speed camera. The photos were then analyzed using mainly the ImageJ software and the naked eye. After analyzing the photos for the experimental sets the following were found: a) The frequency of bubble formation was for the most part constant with an average of 11 bubbles per second. b) The elliptical nozzle produced for the most part the largest bubbles, while the circular produced the smallest ones. The square nozzle had similar bubble sizes comparable to the elliptical nozzle. c) The circular nozzle resulted in the bubbles with most stable surface, while the elliptical nozzle had the most unstable bubble boundary. The study had a drawback, which is the presence of a jetting flow which reduced the accuracy of the results. Thus, it is recommend that future work can solve this issue by finding at which gas flow rate pure bubbling flow stops for each nozzle geometry.