Binary condensation in a supersonic nozzle

Abstract

Experiments in nozzles are extremely important because they provide higher rates of cooling, higher supersaturations and higher nucleation rates than any of the other techniques. Their operating conditions are more typical of the important industrial conditions such as aerodynamic and turbomechanical flows where homogeneous nucleation can have serious consequences. Because the fluid mechanics of nozzles are well defined and understood, nucleation experiments in the nozzle are amenable to sophisticated modeling efforts and much useful insight can be gained regarding the nucleation and droplet growth processes under these severe cooling conditions. This paper summarizes recent experimental work using a gently diverging supersonic Laval nozzle to investigate all three binary pairs in the water-propanol-ethanol ternary system. Of these three binary systems, ethanol-water and propanol-water are both non-ideal and strongly influenced by surface enrichment, while ethanol-propanol should be almost ideal. The authors briefly describe the experimental apparatus and their method for preparing the binary gas mixtures. They present their experimental results and compare them to relevant experimental data and nucleation rate calculations available in the literature.