Some aspects of the design of sonochemical reactors

The magnitudes of collapse pressures and temperatures as well as the number of free radicals generated at the end of cavitation events are strongly dependent on the operating parameters of the equipment namely, intensity and frequency of irradiation along with the geometrical arrangement of the transducers and the liquid phase physicochemical properties, which affect the initial size of the nuclei and the nucleation process. In the present work, the effect of these parameters on the collapse pressure generated and the maximum size of the cavity during the cavitation phenomena have been studied using the bubble dynamics equation, which considers the compressibility of the medium and a single bubble in isolation. The different liquid phase properties considered include, liquid vapor pressure, viscosity, bulk liquid temperature, surface tension and nature of dissolved gases (polytropic constant of the gas). The theoretical predictions have been also compared with the experimental results observed in the literature qualitatively and some recommendations have been made for the selection of the operating parameters so as to achieve maximum benefits. The work presented here is novel in sense that no earlier studies have considered the compressibility of the liquid medium and tried to evaluate the effect of all the operating parameters on the cavitational activity. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.