Dissipation of Turbulent Kinetic Energy near a Bubble Plume

Profiles of the rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy were inferred from temperature microstructure measurements near a bubble plume at the center of a tank with diameter of 13.7 m and maximum depth of 8.3 m. Six sets of between 18 and 51 profiles were collected at airflow rates of 0.1–0.6 L/s, measured at atmospheric pressure, and ensemble-averaged dissipation profiles were calculated. The dissipation in all cases was between 10?8 and 10?6?m2/s3 in most of the profile, but it increased sharply near the water surface. Energy considerations are used to discuss the experimental results in terms of previous numerical models of bubble plume turbulence. Two previous numerical studies show that the turbulence dissipates between 15 and 30% of the available power. In the experiments, the fraction is less than 1% because some of the energy of the plume is used to generate waves on the water surface and the profiles used to compute the volume-averaged dissipation were relatively far from the bubble plume.