MODELING OF FOAM FRACTIONATION COLUMN FOR REMOVAL OF NON-AQUEOUS CONTAMINANTS

Cho, Daechul; Kwon, Sung Hyun

Environmental Engineering Research 1999;4(2): 95-102.

Daechul Cho^†, and Sung Hyun Kwon

LG Institute of ES&H, Yonsei Research Center, 134 Shinchon, Seodaemun, Seoul, 120-749 Korea

Corresponding Author: Daechul Cho ,

Received: April 5, 1999; Accepted: May 6, 1999.

ABSTRACT

A phenomenological model was developed in order to describe the phenomena in which oily phases are separated from abundant aqueous phase using foam fractionation. The liquid mixture containing water and non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) was in emulsion state (oil in water) for easy foam generation using sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), a popular anionic surfactant. Two physically operable factors, gas velocity and surfactant concentration, were investigated via the simulation. The numerical results were compared to the results of previous experiments. It was found that separation of light NAPL was good enough in terms of amount of elution and its selectivity, which rose up to 20 at 5.5 cm³/s of gas velocity and 1.0 wt% of SLS concentration. On the other hand, poor separation for dense NAPL mixtures was shown, which is usually far less than 1.0 in selectivity. Comparison between numerical simulation and experiments showed that there was a relatively good agreement for lighter oil-water mixtures while dominating gravity force in DNAPL resulted in opposite to actual trend. It is recommended to consider "bubble rupture or collapse" as well as liquid drainage and suction effect in plateau borders for better model prediction.

Keywords: foam fractionation | NAPL | modeling