In the following work, the fundamental aspects of the hydrodynamics of gas-liquid flows in a rectangular bubble column are studied using an Eulerian-Eulerian approach. The model is established in a full three dimensional, unsteady state form and the solution method is based on a new open-source CFD package using a tensor-based formulation applied OpenFOAM. The effects of the drag, lift and virtual mass on the fluid dynamics and time-averaged properties of both phases are studied and discussed. A full integration of closures terms is proposed where the standard k-epsilon model of turbulence is modified to include the effect of the dispersed phase and the bubble-liquid interface on the turbulence behaviour and the hydrodynamic of multiphase flow. The numerical results are compared with the experimental data available in the scientific literature, and they show a good agreement. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.