A flying optical probe technique has been developed and employed to measure bubble size above sieve trays in an air-water facility simulating cross-flow distillation (CRODIS). Despite the highly turbulent conditions occurring in the flows investigated, successful measurements were made of bubble size distributions at a series of levels above the trays. Using this technique, experiments are carried out on the CRODIS facility covering a range of gas and liquid flowrates and several tray configurations and the results are presented in this paper. Gas flowrate, sieve hole size and weir height were found to exhibit a significant effect on bubble size distribution, whereas liquid flowrate was shown to have negligible influence. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.