perimental investigation of water vapor-bubble pump characteristics and its mathematical model reconstruction

Abstract

In this research, an experimental test has been conducted to study the pumpingcharacteristics of a vapor-bubble pump based on water properties. It also includes atrial based on the obtained experimental data to correct and reconstruct thepreviously developed theoretical mathematical model of this bubble pump. Themathematical model that was developed for general fluid properties can be usedafter modification to represent the actual behavior of the water vapor-bubble pump.Most of the bubble pump configuration parameters which may affect itsperformance are experimentally investigated. Three different inner tube diameters(8, 10, 12 mm) with five submergence ratios (0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, and 0.6) are tested.The results showed that the bubble pump capacity increases with the thermalenergy processed and continue to increase up to a maximum value then begin todecline. Each tube diameter has its own maximum discharge; the bigger tubediameter gives higher maximum discharge which is in turn increases with theincreasing of submergence ratio. The experimental results of the pumping capacityare compared with those obtained from the mathematical model .Then themathematical model is reconstructed by adding a correcting factor (K). This factoris necessary to account for the discrepancies that observed between theexperimental and the theoretical results. The margin of error between the results ofthe resulting corrected mathematical model and the results of the practical test wasacceptable and it can use this new model to analyze the performance of the bubblepump.