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1. Collective bursting of free-surface bubbles, and the role of surface contamination

   https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2021.272  

   Néel, B.; Deike, L. (June 2021, Journal of Fluid Mechanics)

   Air bubbles at the surface of water end their life in a particular way: when bursting, they may eject drops of liquid in the surrounding environment. Many uncertainties remain regarding collective effects of bubbles at the water–air interface, despite extensive efforts to describe the bursting mechanisms, motivated by their critical importance in mass transfers between the ocean and the atmosphere in the production of sea spray aerosols. We investigate the effect of surfactant on the collective dynamics and statistics of air bubbles evolving freely at the surface of water, through an experimental set-up controlling the bulk distribution of bubbles with nearly monodisperse millimetric air bubbles. We observe that for low contamination, bubble coalescence is inevitable and leads to a broad surface size distribution. For higher surfactant concentrations, coalescence at the surface is prevented and bubble lifetime is increased, leading to the formation of rafts with a surface size distribution identical to the bulk distribution. This shows that surface contamination has a first-order influence on the transfer function from bulk size distribution to surface size distribution, an intermediate step which needs to be considered when developing sea spray source function as droplet production by bubble bursting depends on the bubble size. We measure the bursting and merging rates of bubbles as a function of contamination through a complementary freely decaying raft experiment. We propose a cellular automaton model that includes the minimal ingredients to reproduce the experimental results in the statistically stationary configuration: production, coalescence and bursting after a finite lifetime. 

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2. Computational Modeling of Methane Pyrolysis in a Fixed-Bed Reactor for CO₂-Free Hydrogen Production”

   Arnold, P; Chowdhury, MD_S; Layza_Escobar, EG; Crossley, S; Papavassiliou, DV (November 2025, American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics)

   Understanding the dynamics of a methane bubble in a liquid metal bubble column reactor is important for optimizing the reactor design and improving efficiency. To better understand methane bubble dynamics and the reaction to produce hydrogen, we employ ANSYS Fluent to investigate the gas-liquid interface, to relate the surface area where reaction occurs to bubble size, and to determine coalescing behavior as a function of dimensionless numbers. Once the simulation is verified by comparing bubble velocity [1], shape [2], and coalescing distance [3] for a water-air system, a methane bubble in liquid bismuth at 1000 k is examined [4] [5]. Experimentally obtained kinetic parameters for the reaction are used in the computations. The bubble interfacial area to volume ratio is maximized at a diameter of 4mm and does not induce breakage of the bubble. The coalescing distance for two bubbles of methane in bismuth is a third of the distance for air in water bubbles. REFERENCES 1. S. Baz-Rodríguez, A. Aguilar-Corona, and A. Soria, Rev. Mex. Ing. Quím. 8, 213 (2009). 2. R. Clift, J. R. Grace, and M. E. Weber, Bubbles, Drops, and Particles (Academic Press, New York, 1978). 3. T. Otake, S. Tone, K. Nakao, and Y. Mitsuhashi, Chem. Eng. Sci. 32, 377 (1977). 4. M. J. Assael, K. Gialou, K. Kakosimos, and I. Metaxa, High Temp. High Press. 41, 101 (2012). 5. Engineering ToolBox (2004), https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/methane-d_1420.html. Funding acknowledgement The support of the US National Science Foundation under grant number 2317726 is gratefully acknowledged. 

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3. A Mechanistic Sea Spray Generation Function Based on the Sea State and the Physics of Bubble Bursting

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2022AV000750  

   Deike, L.; Reichl, B. G.; Paulot, F. (December 2022, AGU Advances)

   Abstract Bubbles bursting at the ocean surface are an important source of ocean‐spray aerosol, with implications on radiative and cloud processes. Yet, very large uncertainties exist on the role of key physical controlling parameters, including wind speed, sea state and water temperature. We propose a mechanistic sea spray generation function that is based on the physics of bubble bursting. The number and mean droplet radius of jet and film drops is described by scaling laws derived from individual bubble bursting laboratory and numerical experiments, as a function of the bubble radius and the water physico‐chemical properties (viscosity, density and surface tension, all functions of temperature), with drops radii at production from 0.1 to 500 µm. Next, we integrate over the bubble size distribution entrained by breaking waves. Finally, the sea spray generation function is obtained by considering the volume flux of entrained bubbles due to breaking waves in the field constrained by the third moment of the breaking distribution (akin to the whitecap coverage). This mechanistic approach naturally integrates the role of wind and waves via the breaking distribution and entrained air flux, and a sensitivity to temperature via individual bubble bursting mechanisms. The resulting sea spray generation function has not been tuned or adjusted to match any existing data sets, in terms of magnitude of sea salt emissions and recently observed temperature dependencies. The remarkable coherence between the model and observations of sea salt emissions therefore strongly supports the mechanistic approach and the resulting sea spray generation function. 

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4. Simulating liquid–gas interfaces and moving contact lines with the immersed boundary method

   https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0086452  

   Y. Li, Michael; Chin, Daniel; Puelz, Charles; Sanaei, Pejman (May 2022, Physics of fluids)

   In this work, we use the immersed boundary method with four extensions to simulate a moving liquid–gas interface on a solid surface. We first define a moving contact line model and implements a static-dynamic friction condition at the immersed solid boundary. The dynamic contact angle is endogenous instead of prescribed, and the solid boundary can be non-stationary with respect to time. Second, we simulate both a surface tension force and a Young's force with one general equation that does not involve estimating local curvature. In the third extension, we splice liquid–gas interfaces to handle topological changes, such as the coalescence and separation of liquid droplets or gas bubbles. Finally, we re-sample liquid–gas interface markers to ensure a near-uniform distribution without exerting artificial forces. We demonstrate empirical convergence of our methods on non-trivial examples and apply them to several benchmark cases, including a slipping droplet on a wall and a rising bubble. 

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5. Effects of bubbles on the electrochemical behavior of hydrogen-evolving Si microwire arrays oriented against gravity

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D0EE00356E  

   Kempler, Paul A.; Coridan, Robert H.; Lewis, Nathan S. (January 2020, Energy & Environmental Science)

   The size-distribution, coverage, electrochemical impedance, and mass-transport properties of H 2 gas-bubble films were measured for both planar and microwire-array platinized n + -Si cathodes performing the hydrogen-evolution reaction in 0.50 M H 2 SO 4 (aq). Inverted, planar n + -Si/Ti/Pt cathodes produced large, stationary bubbles which contributed to substantial increases in ohmic potential drops. In contrast, regardless of orientation, microwire array n + -Si/Ti/Pt cathodes exhibited a smaller layer of bubbles on the surface, and the formation of bubbles did not substantially increase the steady-state overpotential for H 2 (g) production. Experiments using an electroactive tracer species indicated that even when oriented against gravity, bubbles enhanced mass transport at the electrode surface. Microconvection due to growing and coalescing bubbles dominated effects due to macroconvection of gliding bubbles on Si microwire array cathodes. Electrodes that maintained a large number of small bubbles on the surface simultaneously exhibited low concentrations of dissolved hydrogen and small ohmic potential drops, thus exhibiting the lowest steady-state overpotentials. The results indicate that microstructured electrodes can operate acceptably for unassisted solar-driven water splitting in the absence of external convection and can function regardless of the orientation of the electrode with respect to the gravitational force vector. 

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