Study on gas holdup in a fluidized flotation column from bed pressure drop

This paper investigated the overall gas holdup characteristics in a cocurrent three-phase fluidized flotation column with liquid as the continuous phase. The air, water, and glass beads with a diameter of 3 mm were, respectively, used as the gas, liquid, and solid phases in the flotation column. The gas holdup studies were carried out in a plexiglass column with 0.05 m in internal diameter and 2.2 m in height. Bed pressure drop measurements were used to calculate the fractional gas holdup. During the measurements, the superficial gas and liquid velocities, respectively, varied from 0.42 to 2.55 cm/s and from 6.47 to 10.82 cm/s. Detailed experimental investigations were carried out to study the effects of static liquid height, initial static bed height, gas velocity, liquid velocity, and frother concentration on gas holdup in a cocurrent three-phase fluidized flotation column. It was found that the gas holdup increased with the flow rate of air and decreased with an increase in the water flow rate. Certain effect of the static bed height on gas holdup was observed when the gas velocity varied. But the increase in the static liquid height resulted in the decrease in gas holdup when the gas velocity varied.