Towards the Mechanism of Mass Transfer of a Single Bubble1

This paper focuses on the mechanism of interfacial mass transfer of a single bubble, based on the chemical potential driving force, an approach for calculating interfacial concentration in practical process is proposed. The absorption processes of bubble under both quiescent and mobile conditions are analyzed and discussed respectively. For a stationary absorption, only in the case of liquid bulk concentration near saturated value, the interfacial concentration could close to the equilibrium value; For a moving bubble, under ordinary operating condition (Yo>1), the interfacial concentration is far from its equilibrium. Only under bulk concentration near saturated value or a smaller Yo(Yo<0.1) which may involve the complication of additional resistance at interface induced by surface contamination or surfactant added, the interfacial concentration could be approximate to equilibrium value. The interfacial concentration close to the interface on liquid side for a single CO2 bubble absorbed by methanol is measured using a modern optical instrumentation in which the laser holographic interference method is adopted with a real-time and amplification technique. Experimental results show that the interfacial concentration decreases significantly with increasing Re and is far from the equilibrium one in a larger Re range. Experiments validate the proposed model.