Acoustic cavitation bubbles ultrasound

Guzman HR, McNamara Af, Nguyen DX, Prausnitz MR (2003) Bioeffects caused by changes in acoustic cavitation bubble density and cell concentration a unified explanation based on cell-to-bubble ratio and blast radius. Ultrasound Med Biol 29 1211-1222... 

Keywords Ultrasound Acoustic cavitation Cavitation bubbles Ultrasound frequency Bubble temperature Sonochemistry... 

The phenomenon of acoustic cavitation results in an enormous concentration of energy. If one considers the energy density in an acoustic field that produces cavitation and that in the coUapsed cavitation bubble, there is an amplification factor of over eleven orders of magnitude. The enormous local temperatures and pressures so created result in phenomena such as sonochemistry and sonoluminescence and provide a unique means for fundamental studies of chemistry and physics under extreme conditions. A diverse set of apphcations of ultrasound to enhancing chemical reactivity has been explored, with important apphcations in mixed-phase synthesis, materials chemistry, and biomedical uses. 

A. A. Atchley and L. A. Crum, Acoustic cavitation and bubble dynamics, in Ultrasound, its Chemical, Physical and Biological Effect, K. S. Suslick, ed, VCH, New York (1988). 

Abstract Acoustic cavitation is the formation and collapse of bubbles in liquid irradiated by intense ultrasound. The speed of the bubble collapse sometimes reaches the sound velocity in the liquid. Accordingly, the bubble collapse becomes a quasi-adiabatic process. The temperature and pressure inside a bubble increase to thousands of Kelvin and thousands of bars, respectively. As a result, water vapor and oxygen, if present, are dissociated inside a bubble and oxidants such as OH, O, and H2O2 are produced, which is called sonochemical reactions. The pulsation of active bubbles is intrinsically nonlinear. In the present review, fundamentals of acoustic cavitation, sonochemistry, and acoustic fields in sonochemical reactors have been discussed. 

When the instantaneous local pressure becomes negative in liquid irradiated by ultrasound, bubbles are generated because gas such as air dissolved in the liquid can no longer be dissolved in the liquid under negative pressure, which is called acoustic cavitation [5, 6]. For a static condition, vapor bubbles are generated when the static pressure is lower than the saturated vapor pressure, which is called boiling. In many cases of acoustic cavitation, the instantaneous local pressure should be negative because the duration of low pressure is short. 

In Fig. 1.1, the parameter space for transient and stable cavitation bubbles is shown in R0 (ambient bubble radius) - pa (acoustic amplitude) plane [15]. The ambient bubble radius is defined as the bubble radius when an acoustic wave (ultrasound) is absent. The acoustic amplitude is defined as the pressure amplitude of an acoustic wave (ultrasound). Here, transient and stable cavitation bubbles are defined by their shape stability. This is the result of numerical simulations of bubble pulsations. Above the thickest line, bubbles are those of transient cavitation. Below the thickest line, bubbles are those of stable cavitation. Near the left upper side, there is a region for bubbles of high-energy stable cavitation designated by Stable (strong nf0) . In the brackets, the type of acoustic cavitation noise is indicated. The acoustic cavitation noise is defined as acoustic emissions from... 

Fig. 1.2 Numerically simulated frequency spectra of the hydrophone signal due to acoustic cavitation noise. The driving ultrasound is 515 kHz in frequency and 2.6 bar in pressure amplitude, (a) For stable cavitation bubbles of 1.5 pm in ambient radius, (b) For transient cavitation bubbles of 3 pm in ambient radius. Reprinted from Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, vol. 17, K. Yasui, T. Tuziuti, J. Lee, T. Kozuka, A. Towata, and Y. lida, Numerical simulations of acoustic cavitation noise with the temporal fluctuation in the number of bubbles, pp. 460-472, Copyright (2010), with permission from Elsevier...

The third mechanism for nucleation is the fragmentation of active cavitation bubbles [16]. A shape unstable bubble is fragmented into several daughter bubbles which are new nuclei for cavitation bubbles. Shape instability of a bubble is mostly induced by an asymmetric acoustic environment such as the presence of a neighboring bubble, solid object, liquid surface, or a traveling ultrasound, or an asymmetric liquid container etc. [25-27] Under some condition, a bubble jets many tiny bubbles which are new nuclei [6, 28]. This mechanism is important after acoustic cavitation is fully started. 

In a bath-type sonochemical reactor, a damped standing wave is formed as shown in Fig. 1.13 [1]. Without absorption of ultrasound, a pure standing wave is formed because the intensity of the reflected wave from the liquid surface is equivalent to that of the incident wave at any distance from the transducer. Thus the minimum acoustic-pressure amplitude is completely zero at each pressure node where the incident and reflected waves are exactly cancelled each other. In actual experiments, however, there is absorption of ultrasound especially due to cavitation bubbles. As a result, there appears a traveling wave component because the intensity of the incident wave is higher than that of the reflected wave. Thus, the local minimum value of acoustic pressure amplitude is non-zero as seen in Fig. 1.13. It should be noted that the acoustic-pressure amplitude at the liquid surface (gas-liquid interface) is always zero. In Fig. 1.13, there is the liquid surface... 

In a multibubble field, every pulsating bubble radiates secondary acoustic wave called acoustic cavitation noise. The pulsation of a bubble is driven by both the primary ultrasound and the acoustic cavitation noise. The influence of the latter on the bubble pulsation is called bubble-bubble interaction [89, 90]. Generally speaking, the bubble-bubble interaction suppresses the bubble expansion as shown in Fig. 1.16 [38, 89-91]. Further studies are required on this topic. 

Acoustic cavitation is as a result of the passage of ultrasound through the medium, while hydrodynamic cavitation occurs as the result of the velocity variation in the flow due to the changing geometry of the path of fluid flow. In spite of this difference in the mechanisms of generation of two types of cavitation, bubble behavior shows similar trends with the variation of parameters in both these types of cavitation. The two main aspects of bubble behavior in cavitation phenomena are ... 

In the literature we can now find several papers which establish a widely accepted scenario of the benefits and effects of an ultrasound field in an electrochemical process [13-15]. Most of this work has been focused on low frequency and high power ultrasound fields. Its propagation in a fluid such as water is quite complex, where the acoustic streaming and especially the cavitation are the two most important phenomena. In addition, other effects derived from the cavitation such as microjetting and shock waves have been related with other benefits reported for this coupling. For example, shock waves induced in the liquid cause not only an enhanced convective movement of material but also a possible surface damage. Micro jets of liquid, with speeds of up to 100 ms-1, result from the asymmetric collapse of cavitation bubbles at the solid surface [16] and contribute to the enhancement of the mass transport of material to the solid surface of the electrode. Therefore, depassivation [17], reaction mechanism modification [18], surface activation [19], adsorption phenomena decrease [20] and the mass transport enhancement [21] are effects derived from the presence of an ultrasound field on electrode processes. We have only listed the main phenomena referring to the reader to the specific reviews [22, 23] and reference therein. 

Reason Initial fast reaction of Zn metal with acid decreases due to a thin oxide coating on the surface of the metal, hindering the further intimate contact of metal with acid. However, when the solution flask was immersed in the ultrasonic cleaning bath, the surface of the metal is cleaned by the agitation generated due to mechanical vibration and acoustic cavitation, exposing the fresh metal surface for reaction with the acid. As a secondary effect of ultrasound, the H2 gas bubbles... 

In this chapter we will deal with those parts of acoustic wave theory which are relevant to chemists in the understanding of how they may best apply ultrasound to their reaction system. Such discussions tvill of necessity involve the use of mathematical concepts to support the qualitative arguments. Wherever possible the rigour necessary for the derivation of the basic mathematical equations has been kept to a minimum within the text. An expanded treatment of some of the derivations of key equations is provided in the appendices. For those readers who would like to delve more deeply into the physics and mathematics of acoustic cavitation numerous texts are available dealing with bubble dynamics [1-3]. Others have combined an extensive treatment of theory with the chemical and physical effects of cavitation [4-6]. 

On the other hand stable cavitation (bubbles that oscillate in a regular fashion for many acoustic cycles) induce microstreaming in the surrounding liquid which can also induce stress in any microbiological species present [5]. This type of cavitation may well be important in a range of applications of ultrasound to biotechnology [6]. An important consequence of the fluid micro-convection induced by bubble collapse is a sharp increase in the mass transfer at liquid-solid interfaces. In microbiology there are two zones where this ultrasonic enhancement of mass transfer will be important. The first is at the membrane and/or cellular wall and the second is in the cytosol i. e. the liquid present inside the cell. 

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