Bubble nucleation in polymeric liquids. I. Bubble nucleation in concentrated polymer solutions

Abstract

AbstractLaser light scattering, with the aid of Mie's scattering theory, was used to investigate bubble nucleation in concentrated polymer solutions. Solutions with 40, 50 and 60 wt % polystyrene in toluene were used. A test solution in a high‐pressure optical cell made of strain‐free quartz was heated to a predetermined temperature under pressure. Upon release of the pressure in the cell, both scattered and transmitted light fluxes were measured with photomultipliers, and the variation of system pressure with time was measured using a piezoelectric pressure transducer. The measurement of the light scattering flux and control of the experiment were performed by means of a microcomputer with a general‐purpose data acquisition interface. Data reduction was done using the same microcomputer. The critical bubble size was determined by obtaining a one‐to‐one correspondence between the extrema of the experimental and theoretical scattering curves. While the Mie scattering theory is for monodisperse particles, the experimental scattering curves indicated that the bubbles had a distribution of sizes. Therefore, the log‐normal distribution function was used to represent the size distribution; and theoretical scattering curves were computed by varying the breadth parameter in the log‐normal distribution function, until we had a one‐to‐one correspondence between the extrema of the experimental and theoretical scattering curves. In this way, we were able to determine (a) the size distribution of bubbles in the optical cell, (b) the critical bubble size, (c) the total number of bubbles nucleated, and (d) the critical pressure for bubble nucleation, as functions of temperature, the initial equilibrium pressure in the optical cell, and the concentration of the polymer solution.