Experimental study on the ozone absorption accompanied by instantaneous chemical reaction

This work deals with gas absorption accompanied by chemical reaction in a liquid phase. Ozone absorption in potassium indigotrisulfonate solution was investigated in a batch bubble column. Enhancement factor for absorption accompanied by instantaneous chemical reaction in the liquid phase was experimentally determined, as a ratio of the volumetric mass transfer coefficient for the absorption accompanied by reaction to that for pure physical absorption. The influence of (a) the initial concentration of the solute from liquid phase and (b) the ozone concentration in gas phase on the enhancement factor were experimentally examined. The absorption accompanied by instantaneous chemical reaction is a diffusion-controlled process, whose rate depends upon the diffusivities of the absorbing gas and the solute in liquid phase. The influence of these diffusivities was found to be more significant for lower values of the enhancement factor. The rate of ozone absorption was followed by the time change of the solution color, using new method based on the computer program SigmaScan Pro 5 (Systat Software, Inc., San Jose, CA, USA). This investigation is a contribution to the prediction of the ozone consumption in wastewater treatment, in cases when ozone instantaneously reacts with substances present in water.