Surface aeration in a small,agitated, and sparged vessel

In a recent publication, a technique was outlined for measuring surface aeration rates in an agitated vessels while sparging, and it was shown that surface aeration rates fall rapidly with increasing sparge rates. That work was conducted in a 0.61 m diam vessels. The work reported here was done in a small vessel (0.22 m diam) where surface aeration has been reported to be of particular significance. In general, the results obtained in the small vessel confirmed those in the large one and in addition were generally in good agreement with those recently published elsewhere for an almost identical geometry. For typical practical power inputs and sparge rates, the rate of surface aeration was never more than 20% of the sparge rate and generally less than 5%. These results indicate that surface aeration is of considerably less importance than has generally been believed following the findings of workers who estimated its effect by comparing KL a values under unsparged conditions with those when sparging.