The air-bubble dynamics phenomena in adiabatic liquid pools has been studied so as to present a better understanding of the parameters which that govern the process of ebullience, bubble growth and departure from a submerged capillary-tube orifice. The orifice diameter is found to directly dictate the bubble departure diameter, and the pinch-off is controlled by a characteristic neck-length.
To study the role of orifice size on the growth and departure of adiabatic single bubbles, experiments were performed with different diameter capillary tubes submerged in of distilled de-ionized water as well as some other viscous liquids. A correlation has been developed based on the experimental data of this study along with those reported by several others in the literature. The predictions of this correlation agree very well with measured data for water as well as several other more viscous liquids. It is also found that the bubble departure diameter is the same as the orifice diameter when the latter equals twice the capillary length.
The phenomenon of bubble necking and departure was explored experimentally and through a scaling analysis. Experiments were performed with five different liquids (water, ethanol, ethylene glycol, propylene glycol, and glycerol) to extract the departure neck-lengths for isolated gas bubbles at pinch-off from the capillary orifice. A scaling analysis of the experimental data indicated that the bubble neck-length at departure or pinch-off was predicted by a balance of buoyancy, viscous and surface tension forces. These were established to be represented by the Galilei and Morton numbers, and a power-law type predictive correlation has been shown to be in excellent agreement with the available data over a wide range of liquid properties.
To characterize and model the growth and departure of single bubbles in different liquid pools, a theoretical model has been established. The motion of the gas-liquid interface has been modeled as a scaled force balance involving buoyancy, gas-momentum, pressure, surface tension, inertia and drag. With one-dimensional scaling of these forces, the model captures the incipience, growth, necking and departure of a bubble as it emerges from the orifice. Here necking and pinch-off is modeled based on the newly developed neck-length correlation. The results are compared with experimental data and are found to be in excellent agreement for a range of liquids, orifice sizes and flow rates. The predictions highlight the variations in bubble equivalent diameters at departure with orifice sizes, flow rates and fluid properties, and they further reiterate the well-established two-regime theory of bubble growth. The latter involves (a) the constant volume regime, where the bubble volume remains near constant and relatively independent of flow rate, and (b) the growing bubble regime, where the size of the bubble increases proportionately with the gas flow rate.
Finally, the complex nature of ebullience in aqueous surfactant solutions has been studied using the reagents FS-50, SDS, and CTAB. The influence of the modulated liquid surface tension or more specifically, the role of the time dependent dynamic surface tension on the formation and departure of adiabatic bubbles has been investigated. Comparative studies have been undertaken to investigate the effect of time-dependent surface tension relaxation in surfactant solutions as opposed to ebullience in pure liquids with the same equilibrium surface tensions. Results highlight the effects of the surfactant’s molecular weight on the adsorption-desorption kinetics, and the consequent influence on ebullience. It has been established that the bubbling characteristics in surfactant solutions are, in the first order, governed by the dynamic surface tension of the solute-solvent system.