Experimental Investigation of Taylor bubbles in a gas-liquid column with pulsed gas feed

This study aims to analyze two-phase flow patterns of water and air in a vertical column using experimental tests, and investigate the effect of pulsed gas flow on the characteristics of the Taylor bubble under different inlet conditions. First, three patterns of bubble, slug, and churn were observed with above hundred tests and a flow patterns map was drawn. Then, the effect of the pulsed gas flow on the length of the Taylor bubble was investigated in 150 different experiments. The ranges of superficial velocity of liquid and gas phases were 0.12–0.28 m/s and 0.05–0.25 m/s, respectively. The frequency of pulsed gas feed was 0.25–4 Hz. The results of this study showed that the length of the Taylor bubble in pulsed gas feed decreases with increasing the frequency. In addition, at a fixed gas frequency, the bubble length increases with increasing gas velocity. Present study prove that the pulsed gas flow technique can reduce the length of Taylor bubbles, which will be useful for future industrial applications in two-phase gas-liquid columns.