When hydrogen or oxygen is produced from water splitting by electrolysis, thermochemical cycles or solar-based photocatalytic methods in water, bubble flow and vapour transfer into the gas phase occur during phase transition. This undesirable vapour transfer requires the use of more energy input to compensate for the evaporation heat requirement as well as for subsequent gas purification in the downstream unit. This paper examines the thermodynamics and kinetics of vapour diffusion and entrainment for ascending bubbles in a vertical column through experimental studies for various gas production rates. The vapour entrainment is interpreted in terms of the phase transition rate and its dependence on various operating parameters such as gas bubble size, liquid depth, temperature, pressure, and concentration is examined in this paper. These effects are investigated experimentally in this paper. A phase transition correlation is developed to analyze these parameters. Also, a predictive model is developed to simulate the physical processes of bubble transport in a vertical liquid column, as it occurs in water splitting processes such as oxygen generation in the thermochemical copper-chlorine cycle, as well as hydrogen generation in electrolytic and photocatalytic processes.
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How to cite this article
Jianu, O., Rosen, M.A., Naterer, G.F. and Wang, Z. (2012). 'Mass Transfer and Bubble Flow Dynamics in Aqueous Solutions for Hydrogen Production Cycles'. SET Proceedings, 11(1), pp. 2244-2255. https://doi.org/10.65582/set.2012.237
