Air bubble migration in a granular porous medium: Experimental studies

To provide insight into the mechanism of bubble migration in in situ air sparging in a coarse porous medium, the rise of air bubbles through a granular porous medium is studied through video photography enhanced with image analysis. The porous medium is simulated by a fully saturated cylindrical glass column filled with 4-mm glass beads in random packing order. The experimental procedure for introducing and visualizing a single air bubble is discussed, and the average rise velocity as a function of the emerging bubble radius is directly measured. Compressed air is injected into the base of the column through the use of an electronically controlled solenoid valve. The resulting bubble motion is recorded by camcorder, and still frames are captured and enhanced from the videotape with an image analyzer. The vertical rise of a bubble through the porous medium displays a linear dependence on time. This is the first study to quantify the terminal velocity of an air bubble rising in a stationary porous medium. Comparison is made to experimental data on air bubbles in water and Soltrol obtained using the same video photography and image analysis techniques. Although a porous medium is sometimes represented as a bundle of capillary tubes, an air bubble rising in a granular porous medium is shown to exhibit significantly different behavior from a bubble rising in either a capillary tube or a tube with a diameter comparable to the equivalent diameter of the bubble. The effect of a bubble chain, a series of single bubbles separated vertically from each other by a few centimeters, on air bubble migration in a granular porous medium is also discussed.