Interfacial turbulence accompanying oxygen absorption in sulphite solution

Abstract

Interfacial turbulence induced by oxygen absorption in 0·5 M sodium sulphite solution under turbulent flow conditions was studied. The method of simultaneous oxygen chemisorption and argon physical absorption into the sulphite solution was used. The absorption rate of oxygen was changed by changing cobalt catalyst concentration. The value of the transfer coefficient for argon into the sulphite solution was constant and equal to the value of the pure argon transfer coefficient into 0·5 M sodium sulphate solution as long as the rate of oxygen absorption was lower than 2·10 −7 kmol m −2sec −1 approximately. However, the value of the argon transfer coefficient increased with increasing rate of oxygen absorption above the quoted value. This is considered to be experimental evidence for existence of interfacial turbulence caused by oxygen chemisorption enhancing the argon absorption under the given turbulent flow conditions. The relative increase in the value of the physical mass transfer coefficient of argon due to oxygen chemisorption is well described by the following relation: ▪ It was shown that the effect studied could be the cause of the already observed fact that the values of the physical mass transfer coefficients obtained by a chemical method are up to several times greater than the values obtained by other methods.