Abstract
A gas entrainment rate into liquid by a vortex formed on the free surface was examined experimentally. Water flowed into a cylindrical vessel from a wall tangentially. Swirl flow was formed in the vessel, and then water left from the bottom outlet of the vessel. The flow state of the entrainment was visually observed by using a high speed video camera. The gas entrainment rate into water was measured. A stable vortex was formed in the test vessel. When the flow velocity; the velocity at the bottom outlet, was low, a single bubble was periodically torn off from the bottom tip of the vortex and the bubble-type gas entrainment was observed. As the flow rate was increased, the bottom tip of the vortex penetrated into the outlet pipe and the bubble-type gas entrainment continued. A further increase in the flow velocity resulted in the transition from the bubble-type gas entrainment to the vortex-type gas entrainment and the gas entrainment rate considerably increased with the flow velocity. After the vortex tip penetrated into the outlet pipe, the rotation speed of the vortex decayed. As a result of it, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability wave length got long and the size of the generated bubble became large. Then, the outlet pipe was filled with the large bubbles and the flow state in the outlet pipe turned to the slug/churn flow and a large amount of gas began to be carried out form the test vessel.
