Rise velocity of an air bubble in porous media: Theoretical studies

Date

2004-04-29

Author

Corapcioglu, MY
Cihan, A
Drazenovic, M

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

206
views

0
downloads

[1] The rise velocity of injected air phase from the injection point toward the vadose zone is a critical factor in in-situ air sparging operations. It has been reported in the literature that air injected into saturated gravel rises as discrete air bubbles in bubbly flow of air phase. The objective of this study is to develop a quantitative technique to estimate the rise velocity of an air bubble in coarse porous media. The model is based on the macroscopic balance equation for forces acting on a bubble rising in a porous medium. The governing equation incorporates inertial force, added mass force, buoyant force, surface tension and drag force that results from the momentum transfer between the phases. The momentum transfer terms take into account the viscous as well as the kinetic energy losses at high velocities. Analytical solutions are obtained for steady, quasi-steady, and accelerated bubble rise velocities. Results show that air bubbles moving up through a porous medium equilibrate after a short travel time and very short distances of rise. It is determined that the terminal rise velocity of a single air bubble in an otherwise water saturated porous medium cannot exceed 18.5 cm/s. The theoretical model results compared favorably with the experimental data reported in the literature. A dimensional analysis conducted to study the effect of individual forces indicates that the buoyant force is largely balanced by the drag force for bubbles with an equivalent radius of 0.2-0.5 cm. With increasing bubble radius, the dimensionless number representing the effect of the surface tension force decreases rapidly. Since the total inertial force is quite small, the accelerated bubble rise velocity can be approximated by the terminal velocity.

Subject Keywords

Water Science and Technology

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/66538

Journal

WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1029/2003wr002618

Collections

Department of Geological Engineering, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

STOCHASTIC-ANALYSIS OF FIELD MEASURED UNSATURATED HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY Ünlü, Kahraman; NIELSEN, DR (American Geophysical Union (AGU), 1989-12-01) Unsaturated hydraulic conductivity K values as a function of soil‐water pressure head h were measured in the soil at 75 cm depth at 70 different sites separated from one another by a distance of l m along a horizontal transect. K field was viewed as a random function of spatial location x. Field data were analyzed (1) to examine the isotropy and stationarity of K, (2) to check the ergodicity of K in the mean and covariance functions, and (3) to characterize the distribution properties of K by estimating the...
Tracer model identification using artificial neural networks Akın, Serhat (American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2005-10-26) The derivation of transport parameters from tracer tests conducted in geothermal systems will depend strongly on the conceptual and mathematical model that is fitted to the data. Depending on the model employed the estimation of transport parameters (porosity and dispersivity of the fracture network, porosity of the matrix) may result in a significant variation in dispersivity. If the results from such tracer tests are to be used in parameter selection for larger-scale models, it is crucial that the tracer ...
Performance evaluation of satellite- and model-based precipitation products over varying climate and complex topography Amjad, Muhammad; Yılmaz, Mustafa Tuğrul; Yücel, İsmail; Yılmaz, Koray Kamil (Elsevier BV, 2020-05-01) Accuracy assessment of precipitation retrievals is a pre-requisite for many hydrological studies as it helps to understand the source and the magnitude of the uncertainty in hydrological response variables, particularly over regions with complex topography. This study evaluates GPM IMERGv05, TMPA 3B42V7, ERA-Interim, and ERA5 precipitation products using 256 ground-based gauge stations between 2014 and 2018 over Turkey known to have complex topography and varying climate. Error statistics, categorical perfo...
Modeling biogeochemical processes in subterranean estuaries: Effect of flow dynamics and redox conditions on submarine groundwater discharge of nutrients Spiteri, Claudette; Slomp, Caroline P.; Tuncay, Kağan; Meile, Christof (American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2008-02-22) [1] A two-dimensional density-dependent reactive transport model, which couples groundwater flow and biogeochemical reactions, is used to investigate the fate of nutrients (NO(3)(-), NH(4)(+), and PO(4)) in idealized subterranean estuaries representing four end-members of oxic/anoxic aquifer and seawater redox conditions. Results from the simplified model representations show that the prevalent flow characteristics and redox conditions in the freshwater-seawater mixing zone determine the extent of nutrient ...
Periodic stationarity conditions for periodic autoregressive moving average processes as eigenvalue problems Ula, TA; Smadi, AA (American Geophysical Union (AGU), 1997-08-01) The determination of periodic stationarity conditions for periodic autoregressive moving average (PARMA) processes is a prerequisite to their analysis. Means of obtaining these conditions in analytically simple forms are sought. It is shown that periodic stationarity conditions for univariate and multivariate PARMA processes can always be reduced to eigenvalue problems, which are computationally and analytically easier to deal with. Two different lumpings of the periodic process are considered along this li...

Citation Formats

M. Corapcioglu, A. Cihan, and M. Drazenovic, “Rise velocity of an air bubble in porous media: Theoretical studies,” WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH, pp. 0–0, 2004, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/66538.