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1 INTRODUCTION
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n all aerobic chemical and biological process, effective oxygen supply and absorption is one the most required and
important principal. Some examples on operations that utilizes between oxygen gas and a liquid phase are leaching of
metal concentrates and microbiological fermentation. Aeration
is the process in which oxygen is added and dissolved in water by utilizing the principles of mass transfer. It is one of the
most important processes used in public health engineering as
it eliminates both smell and taste from water. Transfer of oxygen into a mass of water can either occur naturally for example, surface aeration of polluted surfaces, or under imposed
conditions such as, the activated sludge process.
There are different devices that are used to bring oxygen
and liquid phase into contact such as, packed bed, bubble column, tray tower, and plate columns [1]. Mechanically agitated
device is also used in which the liquid phase is the continuous
phase, compressed air is the dispersed phase and agitation is
insured by a rotating impeller [2]. Mechanically agitated vessels are often preferred over other types of conductors if the
following conditions are obtained: flow rate of gas is greater
than liquid; use of low soluble gases; where good mass transfer will be required; good heat transfer is necessary especially
in high endothermic and exothermic reactions; liquid phase is
highly viscous or non-Newtonian liquids are used [3]. Although a mechanically agitated vessel seems the best option for
contacting a liquid and a gas phase, but it has some disadvantages and difficulties such as: complexity of construction
compared to other conductors; difficult to operate in conditions with high pressure and toxic material;difficult to scale up
Ahmed Al-Dallal is currently an assiatant professor in Faculty of Engineering, Sohar University, Sohar, Oman. E-mail: ajali@soharuni.edu.om
Laila Al-Balushi, Maryam Al-Qasimy, Sahar Talebi, Shamsa Al-Haddabi, and
Sumaya Al- Maawali are graduated students at Faculty of Engineering/Sohar
University.
2 EXPERIMENTAL WORK
2.1 Determination of kLa from experiments:
The dynamic method that depends on the response of an
oxygen probe to change in the concentration of dissolved oxygen in the liquid medium during the absorption or desorption
of oxygen was used in this study. In absorption dynamic tech-
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dt
Where: OTR is the oxygen transfer rate (mol O 2 /m3.s) and is:
OTR = k L a (C * C )
(2)
dt
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Solving equation 3.3 by separating the variables and integrating from C 0 to C and t 0 to t:
ln
(C * C )
= k L a (t t 0 )
(C * C 0 )
ln
(4)
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Fig. 4. The effect of air flow rate experiments at Saw-tooth diameter = 83.6 mm and impeller speed =500 rpm.
From the results obtained, it is noticed that the general trend
for the different types of impellers used is the same and that is
if the flow rate of air increases the value of kLa increase. The
reason behind this is that when the air flow rate increases the
number of bubbles introduced to the system will rise, this will
cause an increase in the interfacial area available for mass
transfer.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank Sohar University for supporting the
project.
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4 CONCLUSIONS
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A series of laboratory experiments were conducted to determine the volumetric mass transfer coefficient (k L a) in an
agitated vessel and the different factors that affect this processes. Four main factors were studied in this project and they
are the impeller type and size, agitation speed and air flow
rate. The following is the results that were obtained from the
experiments:
-It was noticed that well design impellers provided better
performance. Some of the impellers used in the study are specified for gas liquid mixing such as Rushton turbine and CD-6,
which gave the best results of k L a. The poorest results were
obtained with saw-tooth impeller, because it is specified for
high viscous liquid mixing.
-It was noticed that as the size of the impeller increases and
meets the standards of design, the value of k L a enhances.
-Proper impeller design that meets the standards show
better results for example, Rushton turbine impeller had the
best degree of mixing and k L a value, but when comparing the
power number between Rushton turbine and CD-6 it is noticed that the power number of CD-6 is relatively low and the
k L a value is not very small compared with Rushton turbine, so
for economical reasons it is better to used CD-6 rather than
Rushton turbine.
- It was observed that as the agitation speed and air flow to
the system increased the value of k L a improved.
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