Towards a microbubble condenser: Dispersed microbubble mediation of additional heat transfer in aqueous solutions due to phase change dynamics in airlift vessels

Microbubbles dispersions in aqueous solutions can be long lived. For instance, 20micron size microbubbles take on the order of a day to rise one meter. Consequently, any currents in a reasonably sized vessel would be expected to entrain such a microbubble dispersion as the buoyant force is exceeded by the inertial force of liquid currents. This paper argues for the advantages of a microbubble dispersion mediated condenser with two benefits. The obvious advantage over fine bubble direct contact heating or cooling is that the microbubble phase, which can be engineered with a throughput of approximately a hectare per second of interfacial area flux per cubic meter of solution volume, should not be limited by heat transfer to and from the liquid and microbubble phase. Rather the limitation will be on the wetted area for heat transfer of the vessel to its heat exchange configuration. The second potential advantage follows from the theory proposed in this paper. Arranging the condenser in the microbubble mediated airlift configuration will introduce additional heat transfer from microbubbles vaporizing hotter water near the central plume and convecting that additional latent heat to the cold wall, which condenses the water vapor and releases the latent heat. This additional convection of latent heat is proposed as an additional source term for heat transport equation, and the magnitude of the effect is shown to be proportional to the phase fraction of microbubbles. This theory is shown to be consistent with analysis of observations of freezing times measured by Mpemba and Osborne [Phys. Educ. 4:172-5, 1969], that infer heat transfer coefficients from fitting Newton’s law of cooling. The inferred heat transfer coefficient ratio from the presumed highest microbubble phase fraction to the lowest is ~7.4:1. Whether or not that enhancement level persists to a microbubble condenser in an airlift vessel, the promise of additional heat transfer should be explored.