High-speed jetting and spray formation from bubble collapse

Effect of chemical species and temperature on the stability of air nanobubbles

The colloidal stability of air nanobubbles (NBs) was studied at different temperatures (0-30 °C) and in the presence of sulfates, typically found in mining effluents, in a wide range of Na2SO4 concentrations (0.001 to 1 M), along with the effect of surfactants (sodium dodecyl sulfate), chloride salts (NaCl), and acid/base reagents at a pH range from 4 to 9. Using a nanobubble generator based on hydrodynamic cavitation, 1.2 × 108 bubbles/mL with a typical radius of 84.66 ± 7.88 nm were generated in deionized water. Multiple evidence is provided to prove their presence in suspension, including the Tyndall effect, dynamic light scattering, and nanoparticle size analysis. Zeta potential measurements revealed that NBs are negatively charged even after two months (from - 19.48 ± 1.89 to - 10.13 ± 1.71 mV), suggesting that their stability is due to the negative charge on their surface. NBs were found to be more stable in alkaline solutions compared to acidic ones. Further, low amounts of both chloride and sulfate dissolved salts led to a reduction of the size of NBs. However, when high amounts of dissolved salts are present, NBs are more likely to coalesce, and their size to be increased. Finally, the investigation of the stability of air NBs at low temperatures revealed a non-monotonic relationship between temperature and NBs upon considering water self-ionization and ion mobility. This research aims to open a new frontier towards the application of the highly innovative NBs technology on the treatment of mining, mineral, and metal processing effluents, which are challenging aqueous solutions containing chloride and sulfate species.

Experimental study of bubble dynamics in the neighbourhood of a vertical incomplete boundary

The bubbles have been widely used in biomedical field, military and chemical industry. The liquid jet generated by the bubble collapse through an orifice is utilized in needle-free injections and inkjet printing. In this paper we devised synchronized triggering equipment, experimentally investigated the mechanism in the interaction of an electric-spark generated a single bubble and a vertical wall with an air-back opening. Detailed observations were recorded and described for bubble oscillation, migration, jetting, as well as the high-speed water spike penetrating through the opening. The results revealed that there was a critical value of the bubble-wall distance, below which the bubble was directed away from the incomplete boundary, while the bubble may tear from the middle for larger distance. As the distance varied, we studied the volume of the water that rushed through the opening, the velocity at the tip of the water spike, and the center of the bubble as well as the migration of the bubble boundary. This work reveals that the high-speed water spike caused by the bubble may be a potential threat to the structures, specifically for cases with a small opening size and short bubble-boundary distance.

SAW-driven droplet jetting technology in microfluidic: A review

The introduction of surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology on microfluidics has shown its powerfully controlling and actuating fluid and particle capability in a micro-nano scale, such as fluid mixing, fluid translation, microfluidic pumping, microfluidic rotational motor, microfluidic atomization, particle or cell concentration, droplet or cell sorting, reorientation of nano-objects, focusing and separation of particles, and droplet jetting. The SAW-driven droplet jetting technology enjoys the advantages of simple structure to fabricate with little hindrance, compact size to integrate with other components, high biocompatibility with biological cells or other molecule samples, large force in realizing fast fluidic actuation, and contact-free manipulation with fluid. The realization of this technology can effectively overcome some bottleneck problems in the current micro-injection technology, such as mechanical swear, complicated and bulky structure, and strict limitation of requirements on fluidic characteristics. This article reviews and reorganizes SAW-microfluidic jetting technology from decades of years, referring to the interaction mechanism theory of SAW and fluid, experimental methods of SAW-microfluidic jetting, effects of related parameters on objected pinch-off droplets, and applications of individual structures. Finally, we made a summary of the research results of the current literature and look forward and appraise where this discipline of SAW-microfluidic jetting could go in the future.

Microfluidic Jetting Deformation and Pinching-off Mechanism in Capillary Tubes by Using Traveling Surface Acoustic Waves

To date, there has been little research attention paid to jetting deformation and pinching-off of microfluidic flows induced by the surface acoustic wave (SAW) mechanism. Further, such studies were almost limited to one sessile drop actuation without any confinement mechanisms. Such a scenario is likely attributable to the mechanism’s relatively poor controllability, the difficulty of maintaining the fluid loading position and issues related to stability and repeatability. In this paper, a novel SAW-microfluidic jetting system with a vertical capillary tube was designed, accompanied by a large number of experiments investigating the single droplet jetting mechanism with different device dimensions, resonance frequencies and radio frequency (RF) power capabilities. The study began with the whole jetting deformation and droplet pinching off through the use of a microscope with a high-speed camera, after which the results were discussed to explain the droplet jetting mechanism in a vertical capillary tube. After that, the study continued with experimental and theoretical examinations for high-quality single droplet jetting conditions. Jetting characterization parameters, including threshold RF power, resonance frequency, liquid volume, pinching off droplet dimensions, were thoroughly analyzed. Lastly, the Weber number range, a significant parameter in SAW-microfluidic jetting, was verified, and the pinching off microdroplet dimension was analyzed and compared via experiments. The significance of this study lies in the realization of microfluidic drop-on-demand based on SAW technology.

Enhancement of Focused Liquid Jets by Surface Bubbles

We investigate the enhancement of the velocity of focused liquid jets by surface bubbles preformed on the inner surface of the container. The focused jets are created from the impact on a liquid-filled cylindrical tube at cavitation numbers of 0.37 (strong impact where cavitation is likely to occur on unprocessed surfaces) and 2.1 (weak impact where cavitation does not occur from the impact). The bubbles with a base diameter up to hundreds of micrometers were formed via the process of solvent exchange using air-equilibrated ethanol and water. Our measurements by high-speed imaging show that at both cavitation numbers, the jet velocities with preformed bubbles are significantly higher than those without preformed bubbles. Furthermore, our results show that after the process of solvent exchange, a large number of expanding bubbles are observed at cavitation number of 0.37, indicating that possibly both sub-millimeter and sub-micrometer bubbles on the surface contribute to the jet velocity enhancement. At the cavitation number of 2.1, the surface bubbles are observed to oscillate immediately after the impact. The measurements of the liquid pressure after the impact reveal that at both cavitation numbers, the negative pressure is damped by the preformed surface bubbles, contributing to the increase of the jet velocity. This work sheds light on the crucial role of surface bubbles on the impulsive motion of liquids. Our findings have significant implications for the focusing jet technology, opening the opportunities for jetting fragile samples such as biological samples.

Particle motion induced by bubble cavitation

Cavitation bubbles induce impulsive forces on surrounding substrates, particles, or surfaces. Even though cavitation is a traditional topic in fluid mechanics, current understanding and studies do not capture the effect of cavitation on suspended objects in fluids. In the present work, the dynamics of a spherical particle due to a cavitation bubble is experimentally characterized and compared with an analytical model. Three phases are observed: the growth of the bubble where the particle is pushed away, its collapse where the particle approaches the bubble, and a longer time scale postcollapse where the particle continues to move toward the collapsed bubble. The particle motion in the longer time scale presumably results from the asymmetric cavitation evolution at an earlier time. Our theory considering the asymmetric bubble dynamics shows that the particle velocity strongly depends on the distance from the bubble as an inverse-fourth-power law, which is in good agreement with our experimentation. This study sheds light on how small free particles respond to cavitation bubbles in fluids.

Jets and sprays arising from a spark-induced oscillating bubble near a plate with a hole

An experimental study of jets and sprays formed by a spark-induced bubble collapsing near a plate with a hole is presented. A Perspex plate with a hole at its center is placed in a half-filled water tank with its top face near the air-water interface. A bubble is created using a low-voltage electrical spark below the hole in the plate. The bubble expands against the hole, which pushes the liquid present within the hole and leads to an initial primary jet of water that emerges from the other end of the hole into air. The bubble subsequently collapses and leads to a second jet that is characterized by short bursts of liquid spray followed by a thicker continuous liquid column. The impact of the sprays onto the primary jet leads to perturbations in the jet and the breakup of the latter into fine droplets. The entire phenomenon is recorded using a high-speed camera to visualize the mechanism both within and outside the hole. The results give a clearer indication of the mechanism behind a recently reported phenomenon on the formation of impacting jets caused by bubble expansion and collapse at the micrometer length scale. The variation of the jet characteristics with parameters such as the position of the water-air interface with respect to the plate and the hole geometry (i.e., the hole diameter and the plate thickness) is also presented.