Chemical Bubble Dynamics and Quantitative Sonochemistry

Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 1998 papers

Abstract

We model the collapse of a bubble by taking into account all the energy forms involved (i.e., mechanical, thermal, chemical, and radiative) and compare the calculated radical yields with sonochemical data in H2O. Water decomposition plays a critical role in the energy balance, but trails equilibrium even in bubbles collapsing at subsonic speeds. Integration of the equation of bubble motion coupled with a full chemical mechanism reveals that (1) terminal gas temperatures and Mach numbers ML increase in cooler water, (2) ΓOH, the number of OH-radicals produced per unit applied work at maximum MLwhen bubbles become unstable and disperse into the liquiddecreases at small and very large sound intensities. We show that available data on the sonochemical decomposition of volatile solutessuch as CCl4, which is pyrolyzed within collapsing bubblesare compatible with the efficient conversion of ultrasonic energy into transient cavitation. On this basis we calculate ΓOH = (1 ± 0.5) × 1017 molecules/J for R0 = 2 μm bubbles optimally sonicated at 300 kHz and 2.3 W/cm2 by assuming mass and energy accommodation coefficients of α ≤ 7 × 10-3 and ε ≤ 0.04, respectively, in gas−liquid collisions, and values about 3-fold smaller after averaging over the nuclei size distribution. Since there is negligible radical recombination during dispersal, these ΓOH values represent available oxidant yields, that agree with experimental data on iodide sonochemical oxidation. Bubbles emit little radiation, suggesting that only radial shock waves may heat small regions to the 104−105 K range required by some sonoluminescence experiments. The contribution of this sonoluminescent core to sonochemical action is, however, insignificant. We show that much larger accommodation coefficients would lead to higher temperatures, but also to O atoms rather than OH radicals and ultimately to excess O2, at variance with experimental evidence.

Related Papers

• → Sonochemistry as a New Promising Area of High Energy Chemistry(2004)58 cited
• → Sonochemistry(2019)3 cited
• Sonochemistry: The effect of sonic waves on chemical systems(2010)
• Sonochemistry and Sonoluminescence in Aqueous Systems(2010)
• → Sonochemistry(2000)11 cited