Abstract
Dissolved air flotation (DAF) is a solid-liquid separation process that uses fine rising bubbles to remove particles in water. Most of particle-bubble collision occurs in the DAF contact zone. This initial contact considered by the researchers to play a important role for DAF performance. It is hard to make up conceptual model through simple mass balance for estimating collision efficiency in the contact zone because coupled behavior of the solid-liquid-gas phase in DAF system is 90 complicate. In this study, 2-phase(gas-liquid) flow equations for the conservation of mass, momentum and turbulence quantities were solved using an Eulerian-Eulerian approach based on the assumption that very small particle is applied in the DAF system. For the modeling of turbulent 2-phase flow in the reactor, the standard $k-{\varepsilon}$ mode I(liquid phase) and zero-equation(gas phase) were used in CFD code because it is widely accepted and the coefficients for the model are well established. Particle-bubble collision efficiency was calculated using predicted turbulent energy dissipation rate and gas volume fraction. As the result of this study, the authors concluded that bubble size and recycle ratio play important role for flow pattern change in the reactor. Predicted collision efficiency using CFD showed good agreement with measured removal efficiency in the contact zone. Also, simulation results indicated that collision efficiency at 15% recycle ratio is higher than that of 10% and showed increasing tendency of the collision efficiency according to the decrease of the bubble size.
