Work

On the attainable metastability of liquids during depressurisation – effect of pre-existing bubbles

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The attainable metastability is key to the behaviour of liquids undergoing rapid depressurisation. This tells us how far the liquid can be depressurised, or stretched, before phase change occurs. Previous work on the depressurisation of liquids through nozzles and pipes shows that classical nucleation theory (CNT) can predict the attainable metastability close to the critical point, but fails at lower temperatures. In the latter case, it is common to correct the CNT prediction using a strongly temperature-dependent empirical reduction factor. In the present work, we show that the trend at low temperatures naturally follows if the metastability of the liquid is limited by the growth of pre-existing bubbles. With the new volume balancing method, we calculate the attainable metastability for systems with pre-existing bubbles and attain excellent fit with data for both $\textrm {CO}_2$ and water systems. The method has one tuning parameter related to the number of available bubbles in the flow, which is temperature independent.

Source: Journal of Fluid Mechanics

DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2025.10545

Author: Alexandra Metallinou Log

Institution: SINTEF Energy Research

Language: English

Topic: Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics

Subfield: Biomedical Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,550

Funders: European Commission, Total