Observing Nitrogen Bubbles in Liquid Zinc in a Vertical Hele-Shaw Cell

Observations of gas bubbles in liquid metal are strongly hindered by the opacity of metals. To circumvent this limitation, the authors recently proposed to study such systems under quasi-2D flow conditions in a Hele-Shaw cell. The current paper presents a successful application of this approach for nitrogen bubbles in liquid zinc at 973 K (700 °C) in a fused quartz cell with a thickness of 1.5 mm. At low oxygen levels, the cell walls are not wetted by the liquid zinc, and bubbles can be observed directly through the transparent cell walls. Furthermore, using a moving high-speed camera that travels upwards with the bubbles, their properties are quantified in detail along the entire trajectory. In the range of equivalent diameters between 5.9 and 9.0 mm, this reveals a single periodic flow regime in which bubbles follow a sinusoidal path with a characteristic frequency of 3.31 Hz. In addition, systematic intermediate accelerations are observed of which the origin remains unexplained. Considering the unprecedented resolution of such observations for bubbles in liquid metals, especially at high temperatures, it is expected that this approach will contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms that govern gas injection in pyrometallurgy.