Bubble aeration animation
What is wrong with this depiction?
- bubbles that touch never join (coalesce),
- bubble reaching surface simply breaks; real bubbles may persist in gas phase as foam,
- depiction is good in that bubble expands as hydrostatic pressure decreases, but shear may rip a bubble into smaller bubbles,
- depiction is good in that motion is somewhat random; actually it depends on mixing; there is some spiral motion
due to Coriolis forces from Earth's rotation,
- these bubbles only rise; with good mixing, a bubble can go up or down before eventually reaching surface.
- depiction is good in that bubbles are not all rising at same rate, but until mixing is intense, fluid elements are larger than a few small bubbles. Chances are that adjacent bubbles are moving more or less together instead of completely independently as shown in this sketch,
- no sparger is shown; the bubbles are coming from somewhere and are not just evenly distributed along the bottom,
- real vessels have much more head space above the liquid to accommodate foam.