Impact of Operating Parameters on Characteristics

of Effervescent Nozzle
2
Yunjing CUI1, Maojun YU2, Xingqi QIU3, Guangdong Development and Reform Committee
Peiyong MA1, Qizhao LIN1 3
Industry Department, Guangzhou, China
1
Department of Thermal Science and Energy Engineering College of Machinery and Electronic Engineering,
University of Science and Technology of China China University of Petroleum, Dongying, China
Hefei, China
cuiyj200@163.com

Abstract—An effervescent nozzle was designed to solve the
combustion problems of the high viscosity oils. Experimental
study on its atomization and flow characteristics about operation
parameters was performed. It was found that the atomization
quality is better in the conditions that ALR (air-to-liquid mass
ratio) is 0.001~0.012 and the air to liquid pressure ratio is 1~1.1.
Empirical formulas of ALR and μ (flow coefficient of the nozzle
exit), ALR and the liquid flow rate Ql were obtained by fitting
the experimental data in different formats. The experimental
results have guiding significance for the nozzle design and its
field application.
Key words-effervescent atomizationl; ALR; SMD; APV/LDV
I. INTRODUCTION
There are many problems including large consumption of
fuel or atomization medium, incomplete combustion, easily
jam and coking existing in both the civil boiler and the large
industrial burners using high viscosity fuel such as heavy oil,
residue and slurry oil[1]. According to GB13271-2001 "Boiler
air pollutant emission standard", the combustion equipments
with these problems are territorially restricted.
As effervescent atomization has many advantages,
especially being insensitive to oil viscosity and not clogging
orifices easily, it is suitable for heavy oil and residue [2].
As is known, operational parameters such as air and liquid
pressures and ALR have great influence on the flow type, flow
characteristics and atomization characteristics. L. s. Liu [3-7] has
done a great deal of research on effervescent atomization
including the impact of ALR. Atomization characteristics are
different according to nozzle types and structures. To
accumulate information for nozzle design and atomization
investigation, experiments involving the influence of ALR and
fluid pressures on the flow type and atomization characteristics
of the designed effervescent nozzle were conducted.
II. EXPERIMENT SETUP
Fig. 1 shows the structure of the designed nozzle. Table 1
shows the main structure and size of the effervescent nozzle.
To observe the flow type, the mixing chamber was made by
embeddable organic glass tubes.
As shown in Figs. 2 and 3, the experimental apparatus
includes water supply system, air supply system, control
system, spray system and measurement system. In this study,
water and compressed air were used as the working fluid. As
shown in Fig. 4, the sum of the bubble’s surface tension and
the pressure differential inside and out of the bubbles at the
vent just before the explosion, which is about 0.5 MPa, far
outweighs that of the cohesive force between the molecules
(With the temperature dropping, the viscosity drops) and the
force of the atomization air. So the bubbles break into pieces
[8]
. For this reason the fuel’s viscosity were ignored and water
was used instead in experiments.
While a group of geometric parameters of effervescent
nozzle and air pressure were decided, we changed liquid
pressure to get the parameters such as ALR, Pa/Pl (air and
liquid pressure ratio), axial and radial velocities, droplet
diameters and other information of the measuring points on
several horizontal radii. The measuring points were 3 mm at
intervals on each measurement radius. As shown in Fig. 3, the
spray was measured by APV/LDV (Adaptive Phase-Doppler
Laser Velocimetry) system.

TABLE I. STRUCTURE DEMENSIONS OF THE DESIGNED EFFERVESCENT NOZZLE (MM)

Orifice Air/liquid Injection holes Mixing chamber

No. cone Slenderness of Air injection Liquid injection Injection area ratio
Orifice Slenderness
angle, ° orifice holes holes of air to liquid
1 φ3.0 120 1.53 10×φ1 6×φ1 1.67 1.6
2 φ2.5 120 1.6 10×φ1 6×φ2 0.42 2
3 φ1.5 120 1.93 16×φ1 6×φ1 2.67 2.67
4 φ2.5 90 1.6

978-1-4244-4813-5/10/$25.00 ©2010 IEEE

 4

Figure 4. Stress on one bubble at the vent just before explosion[8]

1-Mixing chamber; 2-Orifice; 3-Bubble generator; 4-Liquid injection holes;

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of effervescent nozzle

80

70

SMD(μm)
60
L/ D=1.6
50 L/ D=2.0
L/ D=2.6 7
40
0.9 1 1.1 1.2
Pa /Pl

Figure 5. Impact of Pa/Pl on SMD with different mixing chamber

slenderness (z=150 mm, r=12 mm)

1-Air manometer; 2-Liquid manometer; 3- Manometer for the mixing

chamber; 4-Oattype flowmeter; 5-Water meter; 6- Nozzle;
7-Recirculation water meter; 8- Water box.9- Air vessels; 100
10- Air compressor;
80
Figure 2. A scheme of experiment
SM D(μm)

60

40

20
0 0.01 0 .02 0 .03
ALR

Figure 6. Impact of ALR on SMD (z=150 mm, r=12 mm, do=2.5 mm)

Figure 3. APV/LDV system[9]

Figure 7. Velocity distribution of the spray field (do=2.5 mm)


2000
1600
Ql (kg/h) 1200
800
400
0 decrease the spray SMD (Sauter Mean Diameter).
0 0.01 0.02 0.03
ALR
Figure 8. Relation between Ql and ALR (z=150 mm, r=12 mm)
0.8
0.6
0.4
μ
0.2
0
0 0.01 0.02 0.03
ALR
Figure 9. Relation between ALR and μ (z=150mm, r=12mm)
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
1) The impact of operating parameters on the flow type
ALR is a significant operating parameter which influences
the atomization performance. While ALR increases from 0, the
flow rate of bubbles increases and the shearing action of air on
liquid enhances to break liquid films easily. But if ALR
continues increasing, the bubble flow will turn to be slug flow
or annular flow, even pulse flow or air seal. For air pressure
inside the nozzle is so high that air flows into the liquid
injection holes and liquid is injected into the mixing chamber
intermittently to form slug flow. When large air flows slowly,
the bubbles are easy to gather and form annular flow. At high
operating pressure, whistling occurs and atomization
performance is improved a little. It is believed that air stream
inside the nozzle form cavitations and high-frequency
whistling. Both Air and liquid have injection pressure
limitations. Once one reaches its limitation, air seal or liquid
seal will occur.
The following phenomena found in experiments are
consistent with literatures [10] and [11]. There is a complex
inter-dependence relationship among the liquid flow rate Ql ,
air flow rate Qa , liquid pressure Pl , air pressure Pa and the
pressure in the mixing chamber Pm. It is difficult to control Ql,
Qa and Pm by regulating Pl or Pa separately. In practice, special
attention should be paid to the mutual coordination of the
various operating parameters. For a given nozzle structure, Pl,
Pa, and Pm are certain and the sequence of air and liquid
flowing into the mixing chamber does not impact Pm which is
affected more by Pa than by Pl.
2) The impact of the operating parameters on SMD of
droplets
The inner pressure of effervescent nozzle influences its
atomization significantly because energy for bubbles expansion
is related to Pm[11].
Generally, in a certain pressure range the increase of Pa
causes the rise of Pm. The increase of expansion energy of
bubbles helps to enhance atomization. The increases of Pa and
Pl improve the axial and radial velocities of spray droplets and
Given Pa is fixed, decrease of Pl causes the fall of liquid
flow rate Ql, rise of Pa/Pl and ALR and enhancement of the
shearing and entrainment actions of air on liquid. At the other
side, if Pm decreases, the burst energy reduces. So there is a
critical point at which atomization is best and SMD of droplets
is smallest in the course of ALR increasing and the Pm
decreasing. As shown in the Figs. 6 and 8, atomization effect is
good as ALR is between 0.001 and 0.012. When ALR is about
0.006, SMD of spray droplets is about 67 μm. It is evident in
Fig. 5 that SMD of spray droplets is smallest when Pa/Pl is
between 1 and 1.1. If ALR continues to increase, the flow type
changes and the spray turn to be bad. Fig. 6 shows that SMD of
droplets are between 40 ~ 80 μm.
3) The impact of the operational parameters on the nozzle
flow characteristics
Fig. 7 shows the droplets velocity distribution on the six
horizontal measurement radii under one operating condition. r
is the measurement point on each radius. R is the radius length
at the distance of 400 mm downstream of the nozzle tip.
According to the symmetry characteristics of the spray field,
spray velocity is bell-shaped distributed on each measurement
section. Velocities of droplets fall from spray center
horizontally to the edge and change little vertically downward
from the nozzle tip except the vent.
Fig. 8 shows the relationship between Ql and ALR for
different nozzle structure with many operating parameters. For
given Pa, with the increase of ALR, Ql decreases sharply first
and then slowly. The reason is that air takes up more flow area
of the orifice with the increase of air flux or decrease of water
one. For given nozzle structure, the smaller ALR, the droplets
velocities and Ql are higher.
As shown in the figure 9, the relationship between ALR
and μ is obtained by power format fitting the experimental
data.
μ = 0.0308(ALR) -0.4587 (1)
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The following conclusions are deduced from experiments.
Special attention should be paid to the coordination of the
inter-dependently operating parameters in experiments.
In the conditions that ALR is between 0.001 and 0.012 and
Pa/Pl is between 1 and 1.1 the atomization performance is best.
The flow characteristics of the designed effervescent nozzle are
shown as the following formula.
μ = 0.0308(ALR) -0.4587.
 If ALR continues to increase, bubble flow begins to change
the flow type. The critical conditions and relative atomization
performances should be ascertain in further study.
V. REFERENCES
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