Transition from bubbling to jetting in submerged gas-liquid jets through a minichannel

Abstract

This paper provides a first insight into the transition from bubbling to jetting of submerged jets generated by the ejection of gas-liquid mixing flows through a minichannel into water. The ejections of rivulet, annular, churn, and Taylor-annular flows are found to generate jet behaviors of aperiodic bubbling, impact bubbling, chaotic bubbling, jetting-like jets, unstable jetting, and stable jetting. The correspondence relationship between the in-channel flows and submerged jets is revealed by establishing their flow regime maps, as well as the prediction models of transition boundaries. Compared to single-phase gas jets, the participation of liquid phase in mixing flows significantly promotes the transition from bubbling to jetting. Specifically, the increase of liquid phase velocity decreases the critical gas phase velocity for the transition from bubbling to jetting-like jets, as well as the transition from unstable jetting to stable jetting, characterized by the increase of liquid slug frequency and jet penetration length, as well as the decrease of liquid slug length, jet pitch-off frequency, and jet cone angles. As a result, via the in-channel mixing with a liquid phase of a Weber number of 110 prior to orifice ejection, the critical Mach number for the onset of stable jetting is significantly reduced from 3.76 to 1.25.