Abstract: The tendency of carbonated beverage to generate excessive foam when it is produced and bottled is reduced in a process including: (a) providing water or a mixture of water and syrup, which contains oxygen or air dissolved therein, and maintaining a pressure greater than atmospheric thereon; (b) saturating said mixture with carbon dioxide, and feeding the resultant mixture to step (c), while maintaining sufficient pressure thereon that no dissolved gas evolves therefrom; and (c) removing dissolved oxygen or air from the mixture formed in step (b) while dissolving additional carbon dioxide into said mixture and maintaining over said mixture a pressure greater than atmospheric.

Abstract: Disclosed is an apparatus for injecting a gas such as CO.sub.2 into a flowing liquid. The liquid is contained in a three-section conduit consisting of converging, bottleneck and diverging sections. The sections are joined end-to-end with different radii adjacent their inner surfaces, i.e., they are joined end-to-end without concordance radii so as to produce a turbulence effect in the liquid flowing through the conduit. An annular chamber is disposed about the bottleneck section and includes a connection for connecting to a source of pressurized gas or the like. The annular chamber is separated from the bottleneck by a wall perforated with micro-holes which allow gas entrainment into the flowing liquid. A plurality of hollow needles which extend varying amounts into the liquid flow are disposed in the wall to provide multiple sites of gas injection in the annular chamber. The arrangement is useful for neutralizing alkaline water by injecting CO.sub.2 gas therein.