Liquid bubbler design?

[tsurikov]

Hello all,

I have a question concerning the design of a "bubbler", i.e., a vessel full of a liquid through which a gas is bubbled to pick up some liquid vapor. In my research, I have successfully used a two-stage bubbler system with nitrogen gas flowing through acetone liquid. I was able to determine (via a light absorption measurement) that my system easily saturated the nitrogen with acetone vapor - which is exactly what I wanted.

Now, I am trying to build a bubbler system for use with air passing through toluene. Here, too, I need to saturate the air with toluene vapor. I cannot measure the toluene concentration downstream of the bubbler (toluene does not absorb light in any wavelength for which a source is available in our lab). Right now, I just assume that the system is saturated - as some other researchers have done. But that's not really rigorous and scientifically accurate. What I'm looking for is some sort of criteria - perhaps based on residence time in the bubbler, bubble area, etc. - that would let me judge whether I'm saturating or not.

Does anything like that exist? I appreciate any advice you can offer.

Best regards,
--M. Tsurikov

 

[saxon]

tsurikov, Instead of trying to just calculate theoretical saturation levels, why don't you install a side stream field mounted analytical instrument such as G.C. or Mass Spec.. This will allow you to do real time quality control and allow you to build a data base on saturation level vs. residence time vs sparger design.

saxon