Effect of Gas Sources on the Oxygen Transfer Efficiency Produced by Fine Bubbles Generator

Abstract

Fine bubbles (micro to nanometer-sized) have rapidly gained popularity in academia and industry due to their unique properties, such as their high surface area, stability, and longevity. In this study, the performance of oxygen transfer rate efficiency in fine bubbles with high purity oxygen and atmospheric air was analyzed. In this study, the developed fine bubbles generator with power requirement 300 watt was used to evaluate the production of fine bubbles and oxygen transfer efficiency at two type gas sources i.e., ambient air and high-purity oxygen in the small bench aqueous media (5 L water tank). The fine bubbles generator was set up at the pressure in 50 psi and gas flow rate at 0.3 L/min to produce fine bubbles in water medium. The effect of water recirculation process in the bubbles production was measured using particles size analyzer (PSA), zeta potential and dissolved oxygen (DO) meter to measure temperature and dissolved oxygen on the water. Dissolved Oxygen (DO) measurement shows the saturation value of oxygen concentration in water, for high purity oxygen is 30 mg/L higher than air which has a value of 8.64 mg/L. This causes the efficiency of gas transfer in high-purity oxygen to reach 72.09% higher than ambient air at 35.39%. The particle size distribution shows that the mean size of bubbles after 10 minutes recirculation was 465.5 nm and 599.9 nm correspondingly for ambient air and oxygen gas source. High purity oxygen also affect to the zeta potential value tends to be more negative than in ambient air. The type of high-purity oxygen gas can increase the efficiency of the oxygen transfer rate so that the gas containing high-purity oxygen increases the volumetric oxygen transfer rate coefficient which is 2 times higher than using ambient air.