Experimental verification of different approaches for the determination of gas bubble equivalent diameter from optical imaging

Abstract

The key group of research methods used for the analysis of formation and flow of gas bubbles in liquids are those involving digital imaging and shadowgraphy. Despite their frequent use, there is no comprehensive analysis of the compliance of different procedures to determine bubble size based on experimental data. In this work, fifteen different approaches for shape recognition were used to determine the equivalent diameter of a bubble and then the results obtained were compared with bubble equivalent diameters determined experimentally. The experiments concerned bubbles of equivalent diameters in the range of 2.4–5.4 mm which correspond to the size of the bubbles most commonly encountered in industrial practice. Particularly, three algorithms for bubble shape detection were evaluated and then three sets of parameters to express the size of the bubble and two types of bubble equivalent diameter were derived. It was found that the most accurate results are obtained by using image binarization and Canny edge detection for the determination of the bubble shape, combined with the Feret diameter employed to express its size and with the volumetric equivalent diameter instead of the superficial one. As the binarization method is not versatile, we recommend using the Canny edge detector.