Experimental study on the effect of submergence ratio and air flow rate on the characteristics of liquid-gas-solid three-phase airlift pump

Airlift pump can be used as an alternative to lift the sediment from the the water. The airlift pump employed in this study was a conventional type that used a compressor on the injector system. This study aimed to determine the characteristics of the airlift pump in a three-phase flow. In the experiments, the sludge used was solid spherical particles with 1.43 mm as the particle average diameters. The experiment operated upriser pipe with an inner diameter 56 mm and 3.4 m height. The submergence ratio of the upriser in water was: 0.5, 0.62, and 0.74, while the supplied air flow rate was 60 l/min, 70 l/min, and 80 l/min under atmospheric conditions. The research matrix was obtained by combined two variables, which were the submergence ratio and the airflow rate. Further, it was used to determine the effect on the flow rate of discharge solid particles, the flow rate of discharge water, and the pressure gradient. Visual observation was utilized to determine the behavior of the three-phase liquid-gas-solid flow in the pipe. The results were acquired from visual observations that depicted the flow regime occurrence, slug, churn, and annular. Moreover, the measurement results of the flow rate and pressure gradient discovered that in the submergence ratio and the injected air flow rate had a significant influence on the flow characteristics.