Drop Size Measurements in a Laboratory Scale Venturi Scrubber

Abstract

Venturi scrubbers are high efficiency gas cleaners in which suspended particles are removed from gas streams by droplets formed by liquid atomisation, usually in the venturi throat. The size of the droplets formed is of fundamental importance to the performance of the equipment, both in terms of pressure drop and collection efficiency. In this study, drop sizes in a cylindrical laboratory scale venturi scrubber were measured using a laser diffraction technique. Gas velocity and liquid to gas ratios varied from 50 to 90 m/s and 0.5 to 2.0 l/m3, respectively. Water was inserted as perpendicular jets at the beginning of the throat. Measurements were performed at three positions: two located along the throat, and the last one at the end of the diffuser. The data presented here are a typical example of pneumatic atomisation and can be relevant to other industrial applications such as combustion and engine technology. Finally, results are compared to available correlations and the validity of these equations is discussed

Improvement of Centrifugal Wet Scrubber Design Through Laboratory Experimentation and Computational Fluid Dynamics

“…Similarly, Roberts & Hill (1981) also studied the liquid breakup in a venturi throat and concluded that the final droplet size depended on the initial jet diameter. Alonso & Azzopardi (2001) used equipment based on laser diffraction to measure the droplet size in a venturi scrubber and concluded that the correlation of Nukiyama & Tanasawa (1938) over-predicted the droplet size while that of Boll et al (1974) produced results that compared very well with their own findings. More recently, applied a similar laser diffraction method using commercially available apparatus and concluded that neither of the correlations reported in literature gave a satisfactory estimate of the droplet size distribution.…”