AbstractBased on the velocity profiles around clean and relatively contaminated gas bubbles, the tangential and normal stress, pressure distribution at the surface around the gas bubbles, and finally the viscous, form and total drag coefficient of the gas bubbles were calculated and compared with experimental values for dilute aqueous solutions of alcohols. The theory verifies the experimental observation that the total drag coefficient of single gas bubbbles increases with the contamination factor. The effect of the void fraction of the gas bubble swarm on the total drag coefficient was examined by the use of a void function. Most of the void functions for the relatively contaminated gas bubble swarms were between the values of potential flow and that of solid spheres.