Treatment of liquid
AssigneeThe BOC Group, Inc.
InventorStephen B. Harrison
Life of this patent
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Abstract
There is described an improvement in a process of dispersing/dissolving a gas in a body of aqueous liquid by dispersing/dissolving the gas in a stream of the liquid and introducing the stream into the body of liquid comprising introducing a quantity of non-ionic surfactant, anionic surfactant or mixtures thereof into the liquid thereby inhibiting coalescence of gas bubbles and enhancing dispersion/dissolution.
Claims20
In a method of dispersing or dissolving a gas in a volume of aqueous liquid comprising the steps of forming a multiplicity of discrete bubbles of the gas in a stream of the liquid for dispersion or dissolution therein and introducing the stream into said volume so as to disperse or dissolve the gas in said volume, the improvement comprising introducing a quantity of surfactant into the liquid thereby inhibiting coalescence of said gas bubbles and improving dissolution, said surfactant is selected from the group consisting of at least one non-ionic surfactant comprising an ethyoxylated, branched-chain, alkyl alcohol or alkyl-substituted phenol wherein the alkyl group contains from 8 to 18 carbon atoms, said non-ionic surfactant having a hydrophile/lipophile balance (HLB) of from 8 to 20;
- at least one anionic surfactant derivative of said non-ionic surfactant;
- and a mixture of said non-ionic and anionic surfactants.
A method in accordance with 1, wherein the gas is substantially pure oxygen, oxygen-enriched air or air.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.