Gas Sparging

Department Editor: Scott Jenkins

parging refers to the process of injecting a gas through a diffuser into a liquid phase. It is used in both physical and chemical process applications. In physical process applications, the gas is used to either dissolve gas into liquid (such as aeration and carbonation) or to remove contaminants from the liquid phase (such as oxygen stripping, volatile organic compound stripping and water stripping). In chemical process applications, sparging is used to dissolve reactant gases into a liquid phase for further reaction (such as in hydrogenation, oxidation, fermentation and ozonation reactions). The following information discusses some of the considerations required for setting up a sparging operation and selecting sparging equipment. Spargers (diffusers) come in various sizes, congurations and materials of construction. They are chosen based on the design and operating conditions of the process. Metal spargers are used in high-temperature, corrosive or oxidizing conditions, whereas ceramic spargers are sufcient for mild conditions. The type and conguration of the sparger used depend on factors such as whether a process is continuous or batch, gas owrate, tank size, mechanical agitation, operating pressure and temperature.
Normalized nitrogen flowrate

Mass-transfer rate
The main purpose of a sparger is to increase the gas-to-liquid mass-transfer efciency, which is the ratio of the amount of active gas component (that is dissolved in liquid) to the gas injected. A low efciency will result in an increased gas-injection rate and therefore increased cost to achieve the desired results. The liquid-phase masstransfer resistance primarily controls the gas-to-liquid mass-transfer efciency. The gas-to-liquid mass-transfer rate per unit volume is given by KLa(C* C). In this equation, KL is the liquid-phase masstransfer coefcient that is dependent on the diffusivity, liquid viscosity, temperature, and mixing; a is the interfacial area of gas bubbles in contact with liquid; C* is the saturated concentration of the gas in liquid; and C is the concentration in bulk liquid. As the interfacial area a is increased by sparging small gas bubbles with high surface-tovolume ratio, the gas mass-transfer rate is improved. The mass-transfer driving force (C* C) also has a big impact on the gas dissolution rate as the high-purity gas is used instead of the lower-purity gas. For example, the saturated concentration of oxygen in water from pure oxygen is ve times higher than that from air, resulting in a large increase in the oxygen dissolution rate with pure oxygen.

important design criterion for sparger selection. The actual gas volumetric owrate for exit velocity is calculated using the pressure (P) that is the sum of tank headspace pressure (PHeadspace), liquid head pressure at the sparger (PLiquid), and pressure drop across the sparger element (P). The minimum sparger surface area is based on the gas exit-velocity limit for the process. The exit velocity limit is lowest for the static sparging operation when there is no mechanical agitation of the liquid phase. For agitated tank sparging and dynamic sparging, where liquid has high forced velocity along the sparger surface, the gas exit-velocity limits are signicantly higher, requiring smaller spargers for the same gas ow. The exit-velocity limit for agitated tank sparging and dynamic sparging depends on the impeller speed and liquid velocity, respectively.

120 100 80 60 40 20 0 200 F, 14.7 psi 200 F, 10 psi 150 F, 10 psi 200 F, 7.5 psi

FIGURE 1. Normalized nitrogen gas flowrate for moisture removal from biodiesel

2,500 14.7 psi 2,000 10 psi

Water, ppm

1,500

1,000

500 0 10 20 30 Time, min 40 50 60

FIGURE 2. Moisture concentration in biodiesel with nitrogen gas sparging at 200F

Agitation effects
Apart from using a properly designed sparger, it is important to focus on the mixing of gas and liquid. In chemical process applications, the reactor vessel is often closed so that the unreacted high-purity gases, such as hydrogen or oxygen, are not vented through the system. In these applications, specially designed mixing impellers are used, depending on the operating conditions of the reactor. Typically, one impeller turbine is located above the sparger to shear and disperse the gas bubbles. Agitation at the liquid surface may also be required to entrain the headspace gas into the liquid phase.

Contaminant removal
In physical process applications where a contaminant is removed from the liquid phase, it is important to estimate the gas required for the process, as well as other components volatilized from the liquid phase. Sometimes downstream processing equipment is required to recover the contaminant from the gas phase before venting the sparging gas to the atmosphere.

owrate and vent-gas composition in any sparging application. For example, when a gas is used to remove moisture from biodiesel, the key variables to estimate the gas requirement are temperature, pressure, moisture in inuent gas, biodiesel composition, initial and nal moisture concentration in biodiesel, batch size and batch time. Figure 1 shows the effect of the operating temperature and pressure on the normalized gas owrate to reduce the moisture from 2,000 ppm to 500 ppm in a batch process using pure nitrogen gas (~99.99% purity). The gas- and liquid-phase compositions can be estimated using the vaporliquid equilibrium calculations. Figure 2 shows the calculated moisture concentration in biodiesel at 10-psi and 14.7-psi operating pressures for processes at 200F with 1-h batch time. The moisture concentration in both processes reduces from 2,000 ppm initial concentration to 500 ppm nal concentration after sparging, but the process with 10 psi pressure requires 37% lower gas ow. This reduces the nitrogen consumption, as well as the biodiesel vented with the gas.
Editors note: Content for this edition of Facts at Your Fingertips was contributed by Air Products (Allentown, Pa.; www.airproducts.com).

Sparging equipment selection

There are several important factors to consider when selecting a sparger. The gas exit velocity at the sparger surface is an

Biodiesel example
Many parameters have to be taken into consideration when estimating the gas